When the Winter Comes
by Pat Foley
Summary: Not are missions are peaceful. Complete. Holo Series 3.
1. Chapter 1

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

I was waiting patiently for Sarek by the entrance of a reception given by a host world for the latest Federation conference. He had been shanghaied by a couple of lobbyists who were fruitlessly trying to influence his vote. So I dawdled on a narrow path between the laser lines holding back the press on either side. They were recording the arriving dignitaries, snapping still holographs and shouting the occasional question.

The flashes of lights, the shouts of the holographers, triggered a memory only recently relegated to the past. It's a memory that I keep pushing back, pushing away. But every day, it comes back to me, whether I want it to or not. Flashes of vision, feelings, sensations – a taste or a smell. I can't get away from it. Perhaps there's some reason I don't want to. Though I should.

I am trying to move past it. But it's hard to put behind me. Little things, like these flashes of light can bring it back to me. I close my eyes against the holographers' flashes, but I see them anyway. My eyelids aren't Vulcan, aren't designed to filter out light, to protect me.

And I'm taken back again to the flashes that started the whole mess. One huge flash, actually, with a lot of others following. The cracking, roaring, rumbling sound immediately after, like an enormous tornado exploding into life above, bearing down on me. And then a wave, a rush of hot air, laden with the smell of heated metal, and crumbling concrete. And a dark fetid odor that soon followed. That hung at the back of your throat and lodged there as you were struggling for breath, the odor of spilled blood.

The explosion had been so enormous, I had cried out involuntarily. But I couldn't hear even my own voice. The noise was so loud, my ears had stopped processing sound; the nerves had shut down. In the melee that followed, I understood why Chicken Little might scream the sky was falling. Because that's what it seemed like. The stars in the sky were overshot with the fires of an explosion, and then everything – buildings, balconies, walls, signs, flagpoles, banners – even the lights in the sky, that I thought were stars but were actually flashes from attacking ships firing phaser torpedoes -- everything fell in seeming slow motion, but with a terrible roar.

I ran – it was instinctive – away from the explosions. Screaming like Chicken Little, though I couldn't hear myself. It was involuntary.

But I wasn't lucky. Something fell on me, and caught me, and I went down, and then more things piled on top of me, and I was under them, in the choking dark, nothing to breathe but dust and smoke and fire. The noise of the explosions went on and on; I could feel it moving through my body like sound waves. And then my hearing came back and I shuddered again from the terrible sounds. Also competing in my ears was someone shrieking, somewhere off to my left, high pitched and shrill, like a train whistle. I wanted it to stop. It made it so much harder hard to think.

Until it did. Abruptly, with a rattled gasp. The rest of the cacophony went on, but the silence where that screech had been was worse than the cry.

Still, perhaps I was lucky after all.

But buried in the dark, breathing in the choking dust and smoke, barely able to move, one foot feeling like it was caught in a crushing vise and a pressing weight trying to cave in my chest, I didn't feel lucky.

But I've gotten a little ahead of things, I see.


	2. Chapter 2

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 2**

It started so simply. So ordinarily. As these things usually do.

A Federation diplomatic courier packet, coming in with breakfast. A desperate plea, served up with the toast and jam.

"Let it be some award they want to give you," I said, before I knew better, crossing my fingers as he dealt with the many security levels. "An award for over-smug Vulcan ambassadors who need to rest on their laurels and stay home awhile. Or better yet, a censure. Let them tell us they **don't** want you. Wouldn't **that** be a nice change?" I watched him open the final seal and scan the contents. "Well?" I asked impatiently, waiting to hear our fate.

It took him a second to tear his eyes away and process what I'd said while he was reading. "It is not what you would wish. This is a rather urgent summons for a peace keeping mission."

I made a face. "I've planned some really exciting seminars next semester. Ones I'd miss teaching."

"Unfortunately…" Sarek said, his eyes still on the paper. Then they met mine and stared at me considering, as if seeing me for the first time. "Unless you would prefer to stay at home?"

I couldn't have been more surprised than if he suggested I take a long vacation on Terra for the next millennium. If he made a paper hat out of the summons and wore it at the table. If he made a boat out of it and sailed it in one of the ornamental fountains. You get the idea. Such a statement was so out of character I had to look at him twice to be sure he was my husband. My Vulcan husband, when that qualification was pertinently key in this regard.

Sarek never, never offered an option for me to stay at home while he played the roving Federation Ambassador. Even on the few times, early in our marriage, when he'd taken short insignificant trips and I had naively suggested it, he had rather acted then as if I suggested he go naked. That would have been less onerous to him than leaving me behind. In Vulcan culture, it went without saying that bondmates stayed together, particularly if the trip involved a separation of any length. Whenever he left the Eridani system, I always went with him. And even when he was planet hopping among the Vulcan colonies in 40 Eridani, performing his Vulcan duties as clan leader, he didn't much like doing it solo. Pon Far was cyclical but was known to have unpredictable onsets. Few Vulcan males willingly took a risk of being parted from a bondmate. Sarek was no exception to the rule. In fact, as Vulcans go, he was rather more of a stickler for it than most. Perhaps because he did leave Vulcan so often.

As annoying as it was to be uprooted by his career, it was something I been warned of before I married him. And truth to be told, it was rather nice to be thought of as essential, which up till now, I had always been for him.

Up till now.

He knew that. I knew that. He knew I knew that he knew that. We were, as Eleanor of Aquitaine reputedly said of her own, a very knowledgeable family. At least in that regard. We didn't talk about it why I always traveled with him. Vulcans didn't speak of such things as a rule. But it was such a given that I couldn't believe he'd made that suggestion.

"Are you tired of me already?" I teased, trying to make light of it, but surprised. A touch of personal and very human hurt overcame a more logical suspicion at why he would suggest such a thing.

Sarek was not teasing. He folded the papers thoughtfully. "This mission…it is somewhat more dangerous than the norm."

"How dangerous?" I asked, regarding him narrowly, suspicion coming to the forefront.

"Considerably more," he admitted. "Two delegations have previously tried and failed in succession to achieve a peace treaty. The third delegation has just departed the system – post haste, as it were. In both frustration and some fear." He paused, considering. "Given these facts, it might be best if you **did** stay at home."

"But why do **you** have to go?" I asked, dismayed. "Why do they always call **you** when everyone else fails?"

"They do not always do so," Sarek responded, striving for sweet reason.

"When all the cushy ambassadors blow it, they call you," I said darkly. "Say no for once."

"Should I be less facile at my duties than you are at yours?" he asked mildly. "I know you would not expect that."

I wasn't appeased. I knew Sarek had built his considerable reputation in the Federation, not just by Vulcan's sheer clout of political and technological influence, but also by his ability to do just what the Federation was asking. To build peace scenarios where every other negotiator could only manage war. I had to admit he came by it naturally, being a descendent of Surak. But all things being considered, it was a nasty job and one I wish he didn't get called so often to do. "In this case, it sounds like a good plan," I said truculently. "If three peace keeping missions have failed, you know what mood these parties will be in. It's going to be nearly impossible."

"Quite. For that reason alone I believe I do have to go. To prevent a war--"

I mentally dammed all notion of Vulcan duty. "I don't like how any of this sounds."

"You are correct in your assessment. It will not be a pleasure trip." His eyes ran over the documents again. "But there is always some possibility of success. The alternatives dictate it must be attempted. I will go."

"Then so will I," I said. "I've played Ruth this long. It's too late to stop asking me to do so now."

"Amanda--"

"I don't know **how** to do anything else. Besides, you might need me."

"Always," Sarek said, with the ghost of a smile, that didn't reach his eyes. "Still…" he looked down at the summons, a hint of a line furrowing his forehead.

"You're **not** leaving me behind while you go traipsing into battle."

"I seldom traipse," he informed me loftily. "And it is a battle I will attempt to avert, rather than the reverse."

"You know what I mean. I'm going," I said. "It's final."

He flicked a brow, Vulcan enough to not quite like the sound of me turning the tables and laying down the law to him. Very untraditional, that. But at least for the end result, Vulcan tradition was on my side. "Very well, then," he said, though he was still reluctant. I wasn't much appeased to be included. If it was dangerous enough that he'd consider the risk of leaving his bondmate behind better odds than taking her along, that was risk enough to worry me. But I could see Sarek had made up his mind and there was no use arguing. I knew the signs of Vulcan decision, when it came to acceeding to this summons. To my going, he was still only partly convinced.

"If you are sure," he added, as if wanting me to change my mind.

"I am. Besides," I said, striving for a light tone, "I'd miss you more than I'd miss teaching those seminars."

Sarek flicked that brow again, this time in surprise that while his thoughts were caught up in logical arguments against my going, I came out with emotion. Even after many years of living with a human, it still amazed him how many of our decisions are not entirely based on rational precepts. But this time, he surprised me and responded in kind.

"And I would miss you," he said.

Well you could have knocked me over with a raptor feather. I could still count the few times Sarek made such an open admission. "Why is it," I asked, illogically more peeved than gratified "that it takes us going into a war zone for you to tell me that you love me?"

"I don't believe I said **that**," Sarek said, straightening his documents and his Vulcan demeanor at the same time, intent on beating what for a Vulcan was a hasty retreat.

"Too late," I called after him as he escaped to his office. "Your cover is blown."

But he didn't dignify that with a reply.

I sighed and looked down at my unfinished breakfast. It was nice to be told -- in Vulcanspeak that is -- that he loved me. But the circumstances made it impossible for me to get any satisfaction out of it. It had occurred to me that for him to make such an uncharacteristic admission, he was really worried, deep down under all that Vulcan logic.

Suddenly I wasn't hungry any more. I rose from the table too, leaving it behind. Not thinking much about it. Then.

Toast and jam.

I certainly thought about that left breakfast more than once in the coming months. Thinking on how we'd agreed to go. What we had left with such casual ease. We had concerns, but we didn't really dwell on them. Or think about what we were leaving. Little things you never value, till you have nothing.

Toast and jam.

Oh, jam of a sort, I could get, at least at first. But toast, real bread of any kind eventually became as elusive as a piece of the true cross on, say, an Orion pleasure world. More than once I'd toss and turn in the nights ahead, thinking of our decision. Of the life, the work, and yes even the meal we'd so casually left behind. Of food, civilized food of any kind. Of civilization itself.

It would be years before I'd so carelessly leave a meal again.


	3. Chapter 3

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 3**

And that's how it started. Sarek prepared for the negotiations carefully. Because things were bristling and on the edge even without the hint of Federation strong-arming to serve as a catalyst, we took only the _Surak_ – a lithe Vulcan corvette with a high speed warp sled -- and a couple of Sarek's very experienced – read very old – aides, who were willing to go into such a dangerous situation, sans family. It was just as well, because when we got there, we found the two systems had effectively kicked the Federation observers out of the area. But after some discussion, and a few tense hours, they agreed to let the _Surak_ through.

The point of contention was a planet in an otherwise uninhabited system. It had been claimed by two factions in two systems nearby. Well, by galactic standards they were nearby. Both of these had placed illegal -- in the Federation's viewpoint -- squatter colonies on the planet. Each wanted exclusive rights to colonization. Each wanted the others out. Neither had so far backed down, budged, or blinked.

Now, it wasn't like this was a new problem. The most likely incentive to war in the Federation today, apart from the growing human/non-human clash, was the incessive push for colonization. The Federation tended to give itself airs in thinking it had some authority over that. Perhaps it was best that it did, because otherwise there would be more problems than currently existed. And certainly it did have that authority for human colonies. But then, the average new human colonist didn't want to start out cut off from the Federation. Nor did they want to go back entirely to nature, without technology, communications and decent health care. There were the few back-to-nature types, who went with seeds, animals and some horse drawn plows, but they were by far the minority. Most wanted their comforts and their new planet too. So the startup costs for a new colony often included prefab buildings and technology, decent communications and supportive health care in case the colony ran into some exotic and encompassing disease, roads and bridges and schools, regular trade runs from merchant vessels, supplies, import/export agreements, promises of Federation military protection, and rapid support and backup (i.e., removal) in the case of any unforeseen disasters. Needless to say, such costs were prodigious. It was usually at least five years before a colony was self-supporting, and that was in the rare case when everything went well and they had goods worth exporting. So most human colonies needed Federation backing, and the Federation loans they could get with it, and they were glad to have it, even if restrictions came with it.

But for the non-humans who had recently joined the still relatively new Federation, many of them had been starting colonies their various ways for generations, even millennia, and they wanted no Federation interference, thank you very much.

Sarek could understand that. The Vulcan alliance had been colonizing, albeit on a much less grand scale than the recent burst of Federation funded Terran colonies, for millennia. So had Andor and Tellur and a plethora of other independent non-human civilizations. With them, there was neither support nor acceptance for the notion that the Federation had any control over colonization. It was a serious point of contention between human and non-human factions. While the Federation senate subcommittee on colonization would have loved to rule the galaxy in this regard, they had pulled back from their grandiose scheme when many of these non-human Federation members and some independent human colonies, including Vulcan herself, objected. Strenuously. Sarek had been a particular thorn in the Federation under-secretary's side when it came to that issue. Perhaps that's why we were here now. Payback time.

No, that's unkind.

Human or non-human, colonization of an available class M planet, rich with natural resources, was something that often caused friction among the contending space faring people that might want it. And whether the Federation was initially acknowledged to have any authority or not, it was often the final court of appeal for mediation when the going got ugly between contending systems or colonies. When nothing had worked when they had tried to settle it between themselves. When war was imminent.

Of course, by that time, negotiating was…how do I say this? Difficult. That's usually when Sarek got called in. And me. You may ask what business I had to do with it. I'm not officially on Sarek's diplomatic staff and I have a career of my own. On normal – read civilized – diplomatic conferences and the like I try to keep up my own teaching by subspace. Other than doing those things Sarek still occasionally finds difficult – handling the press, reading the mood of the attendees, analyzing the emotional side of the human positions, I don't do much more than unofficially advise – sometimes unrequested. But on these most touchy cases, when Sarek was forced to bring minimal staff, I get drafted into a sort of aide position, (unpaid and unacknowledged of course), where I attend sessions and meet with people and fetch and carry and do whatever I'm asked to do. Anything to wrap things up and get us home, is my view.

With the planet in question, contention had already started with ground hostilities between the two factions on this planet. Nothing too lethal at first. Some crop sabotage. It escalated to some terrorism, with minimal loss of life. Finally a few settlement attacks convinced everyone war was imminent, if not already in progress. By this point, the Federation, who'd been uneasily aware of the situation, tried to get involved. They don't like system wars in their quadrants. It impedes shipping.

An offer of Federation mediation was made, and was half-heartedly accepted. But by the time Sarek arrived, the conflict had escalated from merely the colonists, to involve the original planets themselves. Both factions had their warships out in numbers, bristling with weaponry. Far from helping the matter, the previous diplomatic sessions had not succeeded in cooling things down and the factions were even more at odds with each other than before. The two groups had whipped themselves up into an almost violent frenzy. Their warships were at the ready, as if they were just waiting for the catalytic spark to trigger an inter-systems war.

Sarek was actually quite good in such situations. It's not just that he can rise to a challenge. Vulcans – at least some of them -- have a kind of aura of calm steadiness that can communicate and permeate a situation and the players involved. Though that quality is not limited to Vulcans. Any mother who has gotten through to a screaming child in a tantrum by getting down to their level and speaking in a calm measured voice does it. Or for that matter, any rider who dominates a horse, not by crop or spur, but by a firm air and a solid seat and an indomitable attitude – does the same. Sarek just had it in spades, when he chose to use it.

He chose to use it now.

It helped that we arrived with no Federation warships in tandem to back us up. It helped that Sarek had the _Surak_ ask permission of both parties to come into the system, to enter a parking orbit around the planet in question. Then he began working on meeting the players involved. Even though they'd requested us, it took time for them to even agree, now, to honor their commitment to meet with Sarek even individually. In the time since we'd been summoned, further negotiation had become anathema to them. A lesser Vulcan might have thrown up his hands at the illogic of requesting aid and then refusing to accept it or meet with it when it came. But Sarek was used to such contradictions. Perhaps dealing with an often contradictory human wife was good practice for him in that regard. He did finally get the parties to agree to meet, if solely with him. Usually you only had to get one to agree, and the other would hurriedly capitulate, lest they risk being left out. Then he listened to them, validated their perceived grievances -- often half the battle, letting people know they'd been heard – and suggested compromise. And suggested. And suggested. He nearly suggested himself hoarse.

Finally, having worked out some few points of potential common ground with each of them individually, he got the parties to agree to sit down in each other's presence to discuss it.

Of course, being humanoid, once they saw their opponents, they were immediately opposed to what they'd previously agreed to with just Sarek alone. Again, a lesser Vulcan would have torn his hair out. Figuratively, of course. But my husband was used to it.

Sarek remained patient. Even when they couldn't settle, couldn't even manage to discuss, he'd concentrate on getting them to agree to just one more meeting. He was heartened by this, believing it meant they really didn't want war.

And it began to work. He won over one side to agree to a proposed compromise – half the planet, with two neutral zone bands where both parties could interact – live and work – peacefully – for in Vulcan terms groups kept completely separate could never come to peace permanently. They had to learn it, like children learning good manners, by gradual interaction under artificial limits. And then he slowly worked on the other side. That groups' representation at the table was quite frustratingly divided. On alternate days the same group seemed to hold opposing views. At times they'd agree they wanted a compromise settlement, but wouldn't agree on the terms. On the other days, they'd concede the terms might be fair, and if they didn't hate their rivals with a passion, they'd agree to then, but still wouldn't agree that they wanted to settle. This group bickered and fought among themselves. Sarek had a hard time holding the two opposing factions in discussion when one was frustrated and angry at the others vacillations and divisions and the other couldn't make up its collective mind.

But finally, after a marathon negotiating session that took three days almost non-stop, he won over the leader of the second group. That government recalled certain of the most intractable constituents that had refused to accede to the compromise. It replaced them with less volatile officers. Finally, after three months of near constant negotiations, Sarek at last hammered out a treaty.

It had taken longer than we'd hoped at first. But it was such a victory that we didn't care. There had been long weeks where I'd so despaired of us making any progress at all. That we'd succeeded, however belatedly in Sarek's case, was a source of great joy, for everyone. I say belatedly because Sarek was already late for a prior commitment.

On the day that the two parties had arranged for the treaty signing, his aides had already relocated to the _Surak_, ready to whisk us away to the next assignment once the treaty was signed.

There was a celebration prepared – all the heads of both states who'd participated in the peace talks were to be holographed signing the treaty. It was useful as a symbol to the populace of both planets.

We were down on the planet for the ceremony, Sarek and I. Everyone was gathered and being posed in various stages of signing. Sarek, as he generally did, was staying back from the actual proceedings, letting the two leaders handle the arrangements. He'd previously painstakingly arranged and choreographed the ceremony like a ballet so that it favored neither side and made it appear both were equal partners. Hence Sarek's determination to now keep a low profile. Provided everyone followed the arrangements, he wouldn't be needed. And it was always better, he contended, that the implications were that these groups came to peace on their own terms, not on some Federation managed and proposed ones. It went over better with the populace and it made the leaders who had to lead on the precepts of the new treaty all the stronger when the Federation representatives inevitably had to move on. And Sarek was never, unlike so many Federation ambassadors, interested in using such occasions to further a Federation political career, or to bask in the limelight.

Perhaps the saboteurs didn't realize that. Perhaps they just didn't care whether Sarek was there or not. He wasn't really part of their conflict.

For the fact was, that the intractable representatives, those recalled from the delegation, may have ceased being their planet's representatives, but they hadn't changed their views. Deprived of an overt war, they had, with their many allies, planned a covert action. A rebellion, one of which their own government had no intelligence.

A twist of luck, or my human constitution, saved me.

It was summer in that hemisphere, and quite hot and humid. The colony didn't have much in the way of technology, including conditioned air. Between the lights and the crowd, and the interminable glad handing I had gotten tired and inured of watching, it had also gotten so close, I'd needed to step outside for a breath of air.

"Must you?" Sarek asked, his eyes still watchfully regarding the interactions among the representatives as they prepared for the signing, like a border collie with his eyes fixed on the sheep.

"Just for a minute. I won't miss the great moment. They'll be taking pictures for another ten minutes at least.

Sarek nodded, aware to the last nanosecond when the signing was scheduled, but still flicked a brow and favored me with a glance, well aware I had no such time sense.

"Oh, come and get me, then, when they are ready. I'll be just outside the door."

And so I'd stepped out. Far enough to take advantage of the wisp of breeze. Not too far away was a couple engaging in a little amorous activity, and I half smiled at such human behavior. I was hoping, once my own husband wasn't spending twenty hours out of every twenty four negotiating, to claim a little of that same attention from him myself. But that was a treaty signing away, one I had to get back to.

Still, there was a monument a little farther outside. A fountain, a gift from Vulcan to the colony. I went to it, scooped up a bit of water and patted my wrists and temples and the nape of my neck. It was a trick for keeping cool I'd learned on Vulcan. For another moment I just stood, enjoying the cooler air, rather dreading the heated closeness of the conference room.

"Amanda," Sarek called, standing in the doorway.

And I turned and started back.

And that's when it happened. At the exact time before the signing was due to start. First a rush of light, then a roar of sound, and the heat and smoke of a firestorm. Sarek's outline turned black as behind him was a retina burning flash. The air was full of flying projectiles. The ground seemed to collapse in a crater, and the buildings began to fall. And I tried to run but I went down as well. It was impossible to keep to one's feet. For a long long time, there was nothing but the sense of being buried alive as the world shifted and seemed to up heave and resettle itself with explosion after explosion. You could not stand on the shifting earth, even if you were not trapped and buried.

As I was.

At first I was too caught in trying to stay alive, too stunned to think of what was happening. Then there was that horrible screaming, off to my left. I realized, after a bit, that it must be the female member of the amorous couple. And then the dreadful silence replaced it. That galvanized me to action, thinking of Sarek. I tugged furiously on the bond, inexpert as I was, but I couldn't sense anything in my frenzy. I didn't feel any difference there. If he was dead, I didn't feel it.

I was fighting to pull myself out of my prison of debris, determined to free myself, to find him, and just beginning to understand how little hope there was, for it seemed immovable above me.

Then the one constant, sure thing in my adult life was suddenly there, insistent, demanding, as always.

Sarek. Of course. A quirk of fate, his coming to get me, had blown him away from the explosion, toward me. Perhaps saved his life. At least for the moment.

"Amanda!" he called again.

I had to struggle to answer. My throat was dry, full of inhaled dust, and I hardly had enough breath to inflate my lungs. They had some sort of terrible weight on them, on me. And there was little air to breathe. The first few times I tried, I couldn't make a sound. But Sarek has an inexorable way about him. Somehow I managed to wheeze, "Yes. I'm here!"

I wasn't much louder than a mouse squeak, but bless Vulcan hearing. He did hear me. He was soon over me, calling out again, urgently.

"Amanda, where are your feet?"

It seemed a strange question in such a moment, to be suddenly interested in my feet. Truth to be told, one hurt like the blazes. I had to force my brain to understand why he cared.

"Closer to my voice, or away?" he asked insistently.

I realized what he was asking. He knew where my head was, from my answer. He didn't want to risk dislodging any more debris on top of me. "Away."

He began to dig me out, throwing the debris away from me. Perhaps if he hadn't had the strength of a Vulcan, it would have been a fruitless exercise. But luckily, I had gone far enough away from the building and the debris was not very deep where I'd been standing.

Also, all that time at the Science Academy obviously proved useful in at least one way; he didn't just understand his beloved field of astrophysics, but the elementary physics of fulcrums and levers too. And he was determined. It didn't take him very long to get the debris off my head and chest. I breathed a lot easier with the weight off and I could wiggle at least one toe, but the other foot was stuck fast. It took all Sarek's strength to move what had pinned me, which turned out to be the Vulcan fountain. I would have laughed at the irony, but Sarek was in no mood for human emotion, and by this time it seemed a bit superfluous to me as well.

Sarek pulled me out and we came face to face.

He had a bleeding gash on his brow, and his clothes were in ragged tatters, as if the explosion had slashed them all with a knife. If this were a novel, I would have perhaps flung my arms around him and we would have engaged in a romantic kiss, while the embers of a dying dream of peace burned around us. But that is fiction and this was reality. There was nothing in Sarek's manner of a lover, nothing, in fact, but sheer impatience. Perhaps I should have apologized for having a building fall on me.

Now that I was out, I could see there was nothing left of the conference center but a deep crater filled with rubble. The air was black with smoke. Around me, where there had been a square of small buildings, was nothing recognizable. Only rubble, fire and black smoke.

Sarek had no attention for sightseeing. It was as if the past, just ten minutes ago, when we were about to see a peace treaty signed, had never existed.

He voice was intense, insistent. Emphatic. "We must find somewhere safer, Amanda. Are you seriously injured?"

My foot only exploded into a supernova of pain when I put weight on it, but that was of small consequence. Besides the destruction around us, the sky was suddenly alight with flashes far above. The ships, I realized. They had gotten word of the insurgence and had started firing on each other. The war had begun.

The peril that we were in, the adrenalin rush took over and cancelled out simple pain like a broken foot. "Yes."

Just then, a flashing light came down to the planet and exploded some distance away. After the betrayal of the peace agreement, the ships above had also started aerial bombardment of their rival's settlements. The war had indeed begun in earnest.

An odd purple tone leached the area over the bombed settlement. Beside me, I heard Sarek draw a sharp breath and he stiffened.

"What is that?" I asked, staring at the colored haze hovering over the distant explosion.

"We must remove ourselves from this place at once," said Sarek. "There is not a moment to lose."

_to be continued...._


	4. Chapter 4

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 4**

We stole an aircar. Presumably one of the ones that had brought some of the erstwhile dignitaries who were now under the crushed stone and girders that had been the conference center.

"Shouldn't we try and contact the _Surak_?" I asked, as Sarek was jimmying the ignition with a skill that made me, in spite of the dire circumstances, raise a brow of my own. Had my husband been a juvenile car thief?

"I tried when the explosions first began," he answered, as the ignition hummed to life under his facile hands. "It would of course have been simpler to beam you out of that rubble, had they answered."

I tried to figure out what this meant. Was the _Surak_ destroyed or captured so soon? Had they started the engagement by firing on her? Had she fled without even trying to contact or rescue us? Foolishly, I looked up at the sky as if that would provide an answer.

"Amanda, attend," Sarek said, lapsing into Vulcanur, a telling sign of stress, and hustled me into the aircar.

"But that means…"

"It's a diplomatic vessel," Sarek replied shortly. He didn't need to say more. The _Surak_ had her heavy defensive shields, but, purposely, lest she give the wrong impression when we came into tricky negotiating situations, she had no heavy armament to imply Federation force or weight to pressure negotiations. She had a few light targeting phasers, to bump space debris out of her path. Nothing fit for a real fight.

I tried to process this. Sarek's aides, Shuven and Slomar, had been with him his entire career. I swallowed hard. "They have legs," I said, meaning the ship of course. _Surak_ was built for sheer speed. Her warp sled could reach a dizzying – and illegal by Federation standards -- Warp 22. Vulcan didn't export _all_ her secrets.

Sarek didn't believe a diplomatic vessel should carry weapons, but he was no fool. She had respectable shields too. The _Surak_ was designed to take a heavy hit and keep running. If it came to a fight or flight situation, she couldn't fight, but she could outrun any known ship in the Federation with defensive shields strong enough to last until she was out of range.

Out of range.

"That would have been the logical course," Sarek said, as if echoing my own thoughts, his voice still a bit rough. "We were in a location that had been effectively destroyed. Particularly if the _Surak_ was facing hostilities of some force and had no time for detailed scans..." he trailed off.

That sunk in on me. If she had run, she'd run away from us. The possibilities weren't promising for us either way. If the _Surak_ had been destroyed, we were on our own. If they had fled, we were also on our own.

"Where are we going?" I asked, more on the line of _where could we go? _While we had been talking, Sarek had lifted the aircar into the sky. More explosions were ringing the countryside around us. It didn't look as if there was any safe place.

"The existing settlements are--" Sarek began, and then a collision warning in the aircar began to sound. With Vulcan fast reflexes, he did something with the controls. More warning lights and alarms soon followed. Sarek muttered something in an undertone that sounded suspiciously like a Rigellian curse and cut off the alarms with a sweep of his hand. I couldn't see more; I was trying to stay in one piece as the aircar did things it wasn't designed to do. We went down as if we were going to crash and then up again in a stomach lurching ascent. Behind us, an explosion roared. The heat and smell of the combustion blasted through the flimsy aircar's environmental systems.

"Are they chasing **us**?" I asked in astonishment, perhaps unnecessarily, given the evidence.

"Most likely targeting missiles, going for any power source," Sarek answered abstractedly. "Unmanned. But…we will have to abandon this aircar," he said.

"Abandon it? But there's nothing here." I stared at the ground. It was unpopulated forest, not a city, or a town, not even a building. Sarek had been taking us away from settlements.

Sarek didn't bother to answer. The aircar gave another dizzying lurch and I hung onto the side panel for support. Another explosion sounded close by.

"Amanda, I'm going to cut the engines. Otherwise they could track us," Sarek said. "Be prepared."

_For what?_ I wondered and grabbed the panel again, thinking this was madness. Aircars weren't designed to glide. We'd drop like a rock; we'd crash; we'd--"

And then another missile came for us, triangulated on our power source. Sarek had already begun shutting down the power. He only had half the helm circuitry and his evasive maneuvers were necessarily faulty. The weapon grazed us, exploding close enough that we took a nearly direct hit. One of the stabilizing airfoils broke off, and the ship lurched further. Sarek gasped in shock as his hands, on the control panel, took an electrical charge and for a moment, he was nearly stunned. I grabbed for the backup panel as he was forced backward by the shock. My one instinctive thought was to raise up the nose of the craft, to prevent the direct crash it seemed we were headed for. The emergency circuits answered, but sluggishly. With only half the helm, we slipped down sideways in a drunken sprawl. The smell of fused circuitry and smoke filled the cabin, and I pulled back as the rest of the panels began shorting out. Through the choking haze, I could see the greenery of the forest floor rushing up to meet us. Shaking his head clear, Sarek grabbed the nearly useless controls back from me. At that point, I half-closed my eyes against what looked like a devastating crash.

How he aimed a nearly unpowered and severely damaged aircar for a river in the middle of that forest, I'll never know, but he did. The tree canopy would have been disastrous if we'd come directly into it. The aircar was a simple light commercial vehicle. It would have been smashed and broken to pieces by even light branches. As it was, we skimmed the leafy tops, slowing our descent without too much damage, though it felt like we were being shaken apart by the turbulence. We lost the other airfoil, which actually was a plus as we straightened just a bit before coming in. Sarek hit the escape hatches before we hit the water. Fortunately that was on a manual rather than a powered circuit. The aircar had a just bit of buoyancy to it, as it slid across the water, enough surface tension to keep us up a few seconds before it began to sink.

"Now, jump," Sarek said lapsing again into Vulcanur as the water rushed up to us.

I don't know how we survived. We had perhaps twenty seconds before the aircar filled and by that time, Sarek was out and pulling me out. But we were thirty yards from shore, and the water was quite cold even though it was summer.

Sarek was suffering from an electrical shock and he was no swimmer at the best of times. He'd watched me and Spock often enough. I had, on a few rare occasions when I had dared, pushed or tricked him into a pool, or the surf of a beach. But Vulcans in general don't even bathe or shower in water. In spite of years of living with me, Sarek held the typical Vulcan opinion that water was for drinking alone. That the notion of immersing oneself in it was for mad dogs and Terrans. He had never really learned to swim. He'd never really been in deep water over his head. A few moments in a pool or in the surf of a beach – getting out as soon as he possibly could and generally trying his best to get me to come out too was the sum of his expertise. Certainly he had no experience being immersed in freezing water with a strong running current and no discernable bottom.

He got a crash course – no pun intended – in it now, though. I shouted advice and adjurations. I tried a lifesavers' hold on him – which didn't really work as his body wasn't naturally buoyant as a human's was. And he was more than twice my weight. But we were nothing if not determined. Drowning has a way of making even chary Vulcans want to swim. Spock had proved to me and him that Vulcans could swim, after a fashion. Though a little half human boy had the advantage over a full grown Vulcan male. He might not have been buoyant, but he copied me as best he could. With me doing my best to help him along, he did his best to thrash his way to shore. He'd go down and I'd pull him back up again, trying to add my own buoyancy to his. He'd thrash his way a few more strokes and get pulled down by the current again. Negotiating the current was a nightmare, because you had to be a strong swimmer to fight against it. And being both of different buoyancies and weights, it was sinking him and pulling me downstream, sinking him and pulling me downstream, continually separating us. I had to fight to near exhaustion just to stay beside him, which left me even less strength to help him. When we finally got to the bank, both of us were nearly drowned.

For long moments, I knelt in the mud of the bank and just coughed my lungs clear, Sarek crawling up beside me. He had more trouble getting the water out of his – they weren't as well designed in that regard as humans were. Probably more designed to keep dust and sand out and thus less able to get rid of trapped water. He crouched on the bank, coughing and choking and struggling to draw in air. I did all the usual human lifesaving things, but without much success on Vulcan anatomy. For a moment I was afraid I was going to lose him, he seemed to be having so much trouble breathing. But then, with a shuddering retching gasp that seemed to turn him inside out, he was back with me, shivering violently. I put my arms around him – scant warmth there; I was as much a drowned rat as he. We finally got to our knees again, to see our former aircar sinking fast, pulled along by the same deadly current.

In spite of knowing it had nearly gotten us killed, I gave a choked sob as it settled further downstream. But Sarek misinterpreted the sound.

"I fully dismantled the power sources before we crashed." He assured me, between coughs. "Their missiles won't be able to triangulate on it further." He shuddered again with cold.

"We have to get you somewhere warm, where you can dry off." I chafed his arms and tugged at his hands to bring him to his feet. He tensed, drawing up in pain. I turned his hands in mine over and studied the burns on his palms. Dark green blisters disfigured them so that they were nearly unrecognizable. "These must hurt."

"It's nothing," Sarek said, pushing back his damp hair from his face with one hand he took back from me, his eyes watching the sky. In the distance, there were more explosions, fire, and the same faint lilac haze visible hanging above it. "Do you still have your communicator?" He asked. no expression in his voice at all.

I tore my eyes from his burned hand in mine to stare at his face. "Yes. If it's still working. What do you--?"

"Give it to me." It wasn't a request. He already had pulled his other hand from mine and had his communicator out. And I could see from the display that it was powered. That is, until he ripped out the power cell on his own, gritting his teeth at the pain the motion produced in his hands.

For a moment, I swallowed hard again, unwilling, even as I watched him dismantle his. Maybe a communicator was a useless thing, when there was no ship to receive a signal. Except hostile ships, that is. Maybe it was worse than useless, actually dangerous to have. But if you've lived any sort of modern life, to not have one on your person is like cutting off your air. Sort of.

Everything had happened so fast. Twenty minutes ago I'd been standing by a fountain waiting for a peace agreement to be signed for a brand new Federation colony, with the _Surak_ waiting above to take us back to Vulcan and then on to our next assignment. It was hard for me to shift that mindset that there was no _Surak_, nothing safe to communicate with and that the device itself, like the aircar, was more a liability than an asset. I still had that feeling I was going to blink and discover this was all a bad dream, with Sarek leaning over me, gently urging me awake. To give up a communicator, even one that might prove to be a real danger seemed a final break to even the hope of a rescue, a return to our normal lives. I wanted to foolishly ask if we could just keep one, even as I knew the answer.

"They could triangulate on it," Sarek insisted, holding out his hand for mine. "Even if it is not powered. If they are looking for us… Looking for anyone..."

I handed it over.

It was hard even for Sarek. He did hesitate just a fraction before he ruthlessly dismantled the power source on mine. Then he held them in his burned hand, weighing them, eyes on the horizon, where the dull roar of another explosion, again tinged purple, stained the skyline. He looked from them to the aircar, already nearly out of sight, pulled by the violent current, the force of the water against the open hatches driving it far downriver.

"What?" I asked him, seeing him puzzled and torn, clearly turning something over in his tired mind. In spite of my own bruises, I ached for him. He'd been working twenty hours a day for three months, weary even before today's events.

"Unlike the aircar, they are dead weights. I don't want them to sink," he said. "Not close to where we came ashore. It could give away our position if anyone were searching for us."

"Here." I scoured the bank for a likely branch, and came up with one, big enough to take the weight of the power cells, but not too big to snag on anything. Ripping off a bit of my skirt – I fashioned a pouch and lashed the devices, Sarek's and mine, to the side. Then I handed it to Sarek. "Throw it far, far out, into the center, where the current is strongest." I said. "Can you?" I asked, thinking of his hands.

He reviewed my device critically, and then gave it an approving nod. He hefted it, weighing it, testing the balance. Then the branch soared through the air, exactly bisecting the wide river, landing in the deepest part, in the middle. He had a powerful arm. I wouldn't have been able to throw it a tenth as far. But he hadn't thought of the branch either. We watched as the current carried it away. Far south, where there was another lavender tinged haze off to the south-south-east.

I shivered. We had nothing now but the wet clothes we stood in. "What do we do now?" I asked him. Even though I wasn't too sure I wanted to hear the answer.

Sarek turned away from the bank where the aircar had now also disappeared from sight. "We survive."

We had so far – blown up, buried, broken, burned, and nearly drowned. But somehow all that success didn't give me a lot of hope as I turned away from the river and followed Sarek into the woods.

_To be continued…_

_Review, review, review_


	5. Chapter 5

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 5**

Let me make it clear that I was no girl scout. Survival with nothing but your wits is a favored Vulcan pastime – they do it for exercise and recreation. I could look out my office window on any fine day and see the evidence of it. Lithe Vulcan girls, their ponytails bobbing, handing each other up the switchback trails of the distant Llangon mountains. Groups of little boys, headed by shepherding tutors, preparing for their Kahs-wan. Grizzled old tricenagerians, climbing staff in hand, out to commune with the Forge. Sarek, too, of course, when he could get a free afternoon, and too many times in the predator-filled night for my piece of mind. Everyone, that is, except me. You wouldn't find me on the Forge.

My idea of exercise was a cooling swim – at least on Vulcan. Here, I'd had quite enough of swimming. My idea of recreation was – at least at the moment -- a good book and a lounge chair.

And while Sarek might be well versed in survival on the Forge, this was an alien world, and no desert.

For a moment he turned slowly, in a circle, surveying the distant plumes of smoke in the sky, each one presumably the site of a colony. There was little wind and the lavender haze hung over each fireball.

"What **is** that smoke?" I finally asked.

He glanced at me. "The evidence of a particularly lethal neurotoxin. Even if anyone should survive the conflagration, the poison will kill them. All animal life will die. Even the flora will be poisoned."

"A scorched earth scenario," I said, horrified. "If we can't have it, you can't have it."

"Precisely. Based on the locations, both sides have now progressed to mutually practicing this destructive tactic."

"They're aiming to kill everyone on planet?"

"To destroy each other's settlements and also kill everyone," he corrected me as if lecturing in a class. "Yes."

I drew a breath, and then almost wished I hadn't, wondering what was in the air. "Will that toxin be carried here, by the wind? Or some other way?"

"I do not yet know all its tactical parameters. As a precision bomb, it probably should not, or it would defeat part of its purpose. I hope it was so designed."

I shivered at that. Sarek very rarely used the word hope, and when he did it was code for meaning that he didn't have enough data to make a logical prediction, only that he would prefer a certain outcome. It was a telling evaluation on our immediate survival.

"Are you cold?" Sarek asked, almost in a normal voice, as he noted my shivering.

"I'm frightened!" I turned to him. "Aren't you?"

He raised a brow, and turned from again surveying the distant fireballs to surveying me, as if startled by such a question. "Frightened?"

"You're not, are you?" I asked, wonderingly. "I mean, you don't feel it. Any of this."

Sarek blinked, focusing on me anew, visibly resisting giving the obvious "I am Vulcan" statement that he might have given to some outworlder. "Such emotion is hardly profitable. We have a problem. We must seek a solution."

"**Is** there a solution?" I asked, succumbing to hope of my own.

He flicked a brow at that. "It would be a rare problem that did not have some possible solution," he chided mildly, giving me a curious look, as if the question surprised him.

I let out a breath. "I'm glad you're so cheerful. I don't know if you've noticed, but we are in a pretty rare situation."

Sarek's eyes went back consideringly to the distant flashes. "Those scenes of destruction," he mused, caught up again in his more pressing interests, "they are existing settlements. There is no settlement near in this immediate area. Though I had hoped to get farther afield before the aircar was attacked. Still, we have a small cushion of forest here."

"How small?"

"If their settlement maps were up to date, truthful and accurate, perhaps forty square miles, in Terran measurements. Our best attempt at survival will be to stay as equidistant as possible from any destroyed area."

"What if they just decide to blow up the planet altogether?"

"They can't do that. Their technology is respectable, but their ships do not have the firepower to destroy a whole planet. No," he gave that minute jerk of the head to the left that was the Vulcan negative. "They will take out their respective enemy colonies. They will then, no doubt, turn on each other to attempt to finish off in the sky what they began on land. And carry the conflict back to their respective systems."

"And overlook us?"

"They will not have expected us to have survived the conference center explosion nor the destruction of that area. Nor do I suspect that will they have time or the interest, in the subsequent ship battles, to bother with searching for and tracking down stray individuals."

"I'm only human. But if anyone were searching for Vulcan life readings, you'd stick out like a sore thumb."

Sarek gave me a curious glance and regarded his own sore thumbs for a moment before deciding it was some human idiom. "As long as we manifest no power sources to trigger the automated weaponry, we are likely to escape notice. And I suspect they are not looking for us. So long as we do not attract notice."

Escaping notice wasn't entirely my ideal. I was hoping he had some plan to get us **out** of here. "But where will we go? What will we do?"

Sarek glanced around, gauging the distant scenes of destruction, calculating distances. "For now, we will travel upriver north-northeast, perhaps twenty miles. It will take us further away from the last bombed settlement, and it gives us a wider berth in case the aircar doesn't get carried downstream far enough and some entity, machine or otherwise, comes looking for whoever piloted it."

That wasn't quite the answer I was looking for. "When do we--" I paused. What should I say? What could I ask? When do we get rescued? Go home? That was the question I wanted answered.

Sarek glanced at me. Perhaps a bondmate should be perceptive, but if he sensed my question, he wasn't acknowledging it. Perhaps he preferred not to, no more than I felt equal to asking it. "Let's go," was all he said.

So I swallowed that question while I figured out how to ask it without making our fate more real than I could handle at present. And we walked.

It was a beautiful day for a walk in the woods, under other circumstances. The sun was shining. The birds – in between the explosions that momentarily silenced them and deafened us -- were singing. It all could have been some advertisement for a vacation pleasure world – come and commune with nature – except for the firebombs. Sarek strode along, perpetually watching the forest and the sky for threats, looking at the sun to gage our direction, listening intently to every sound, his mind obviously on other things than me.

At times, Sarek really doesn't remember I'm not Vulcan. He had to repeatedly check his stride to make allowance for my slower pace and then, as if he was processing too many things to consider it, he would draw ahead of me again. He wasn't used to hiking with me.

Periodically there would be another flash, sometimes far away, sometimes closer, and then later, the dull roar of an explosion. I had no idea where we were going, but Sarek, with his memory of the existing settlements was doing his best to guide us to an area as far as possible from the nearest ones, to give us a chance against the toxin bombs. It was made more difficult because the bombing was still in progress. The maps Sarek had last seen weren't entirely accurate or truthful, or perhaps it was the bombs' accuracy that was at fault. We saw two come down near enough to us that we had to shield our eyes from the fireball.

Once it was close enough that Sarek ran back to me, grabbed my hand and we dashed through the forest, running pell mell, blinded by branches, stumbling over rocks and tree roots and vines and falling down, and getting up and stumbling again – at least I was, with my poor broken foot – till our sides ached with running and even Sarek, due to his near drowning was wheezing for air. We ended up at a rocky outcropping and Sarek pulled me inside.

There we waited uneasily in the darkness, in this dubious shelter. Waited to see if the wind would send the lavender plumes our way. Sarek said at least we had water. There was no water but a seeping puddle that according to him was a spring. Really it was more like the water you'd find in a dirty boot print, a small muddy trickle seeping in the muddy earth.

We huddled there, not sure how long we were going to be forced to hunker down. Our uneasy stay might have been welcome in giving us a rest, but sitting on the chill damp ground, tensely waiting, only served to help our already sore muscles stiffen up.

After an hour, Sarek deemed it safe to continue. We resumed our journey again, zigzagging a little in the opposite direction from the last bombardment. Sore as I was, I was glad to get out of the damp chill of those rocks and back into the sun. But that feeling didn't last long.

So far, we seemed to have avoided being directly hit, but as the day progressed and the battle showed no signs of stopping, and more and more bombs rained down, it seemed only a matter of time. I trudged along, limping with every step, dispirited by the evidence around me that these people were so unpredisposed to share they were willing to kill each other to have exclusive rights to a planet that seemed to have plenty of space for all.

"Evidence of the need for a good **kindergarten**," I muttered under my breath, after an ear zapping blast followed a blinding explosion.

"What?" Sarek asked, wincing visibly at the noise, his hands over his ears.

"That's one of the things you **learn**, in a good kindergarten," I persisted; however non-sequitur it seemed to Sarek. "To **share**."

Sarek gave me the look that said I wasn't completely mad, just a borderline case. As were most humans, by Vulcan standards. I didn't care. Then two last ground bombardments lit up the sky to the south of us, by Sarek's estimate a good twenty miles away. After that, the sky battle above seemed to renew afresh – perhaps reinforcements coming. For the next few hours, all the fireworks were for the sky and the ship battle and we had no more ground bombardments. That helped, but it only made the pace we were putting in, when we didn't seem to be fleeing from bombardments, harder for me to maintain.

Finally, I couldn't walk any more. I was thirsty. I was tired. I was sunburned, even in the woods, and every ache I had from being buried alive and the aircar crash was throbbing so I almost couldn't hear myself think. The afternoon was turning to evening, and we hadn't eaten all day. All around us in the woods had been berries, and my throat was so dry and I was so hungry I looked at them longingly. But when I asked Sarek if he thought they might be safe to eat, he just said, without stopping, that we'd consider the matter tomorrow. So I didn't try to eat them. But I needed something. I was covered in cuts and bruises, and ached all over, my muscles stiffening and cramping. I was tired of running when I didn't know where we were going and no place seemed better than where we were. Finally, I stopped between one pace and the next and just stood. Ahead, Sarek strode along, his eyes attracted to a flash that was only a bird.

"I can't go on." I meant to shout it, but it came out in a low mutter. I was that tired. Sarek didn't hear and he didn't turn.

I know we're bonded, but I almost never try to use that subtle link with Sarek. I used the parental link more with Spock – but I think that's almost intuitive even for human mothers, that preternatural awareness of your children when they are young. With Vulcans, it is just formalized, given a name, stronger. But with Sarek, I mostly used the bond inadvertently, when the mental shields I'd laboriously learned to near reflex slipped. But now I used it, or tried to.

I was never too successful at practiced telepathy. Nor did I want to become facile. To be truthful, telepathy is not generally a useful skill. There's more chaff than wheat in the "mind" fields, so to speak. Even when you are dealing with a bondmate. And in crowds and strangers to be too sensitive is stressful and exhausting. In the political line, you might think it would be useful to know what your opponent is thinking, but hostility is painful. With human types, you generally know someone is lying by body language alone without having them mentally broadcast it to you. And in a crowded conference situation, the babble of so many minds, thwarted ambitions, outright ravenous greed and contention would be lethal. I don't know how Sarek stands it.

Though he, fortunately, is not the most sensitive of Vulcan telepaths. Spock has far more latent talent. That would be useful if he were going to be a healer, Sarek once remarked morosely -- in one of those exasperating scenes where no matter how Vulcan his son was, he was never quite what Sarek wanted -- but it more of a liability for an Ambassador.

At times, I do despair of Sarek. As he no doubt does of me. It was a good thing he hadn't heard my thoughts then.

Meanwhile, I wanted him to hear my thoughts now, at least one. I drew a deep breath, though I wasn't sure my parched throat could manage much above a whisper, closed my eyes for concentration, and shouted, both mentally and verbally, as best I could, "Sarek!"

I didn't see him come back. My eyes felt so good closed I wanted to keep them that way. But then he was by my side. "Amanda?"

"I'm so tired," I whispered. "I have to rest."

I really did. I wasn't being petulant or spoiled, my eyes were closing and my feet just couldn't seem to move. I drew a deep breath, trying to go on, but then I started to sway.

He gave an uneasy glance at the sky, and for a moment I thought he was going to argue. Then he saw me start to fall and he simply picked me up and carried me. I tried to protest, but he wasn't really listening, and I wasn't too coherent anyway. He didn't take me far. He zigzagged into the woods a bit, set me down by a running stream, and brought me some water cupped in his hands.

It revived me some. I drank it all and licked his dripping fingers. It was good to be out of that sun. Sarek had unthinkingly stayed in it, probably because he found it warmer, and more natural. But for the last mile or so, the glaring rays had only added to my headache and dehydration that had started with the building collapse and had gotten progressively worse.

If he gave me another cupped handful of water, I didn't remember. If he carried me further, I don't remember that either. I only know I woke up, some hours later, in a different place. It was night. All around us cheeped and whirred a cacophony of night insects, but none at the moment, were of the biting kind. It was so dark that I couldn't see. This planet had no moon, and it was in an out of the way corner of the galaxy so even the starfield wasn't particularly bright. But even more frightening than the suffocating blackness of the night was the fact that I was alone.

"Sarek," I whispered. "Sarek!"

"Here," came his voice, and then I could just make him out dimly. He had his arms full of something. I would have been happy for a large glass of fruit juice, followed by a three course dinner with all the trimmings. Well, just a piece of bread would have satisfied me. But when he crouched down beside me, I saw it was just rocks, with natural phosphorescence. I could see his face a little now, and from the echo of our voices, I realized we must be in some sort of cave. It didn't make me very happy. My recent near burial alive had given me a touch of claustrophobia, and this cave made me uncomfortable. I looked for the damp boot print that might be Sarek's idea of running water, but there was actually a small trickle of a real stream in the corner, running along some rocks.

"I thought these might be useful."

"Where are we?" I asked, letting go the fact that something edible would be far more useful. Vulcans can go for long periods without food, though you could never tell it from Sarek's usual appetite, but humans do need to eat once in awhile.

"Twenty point two miles from where we crashed. By examining the previous bombardments, that seems to be the limit of the toxin's fall out. And I believe we are equidistant, now, from any other settlement. We are relatively safe for the moment, at least at my best judgment. And this cave's rocks has some natural shielding properties."

I wanted to ask how anyone would find us, if he hid us in some cave with shielding rocks, but I was beginning to understand that the final, real answer, the one I'd been putting off and avoiding all day, was that **no one** was going to find us. After the battle that had raged in the sky all day, punctuated by renewed attacks on the erstwhile settlements, everyone who could have looked for us in a friendly manner was either dead or gone, and if anyone else found us, our lives wouldn't matter much.

"Are you thirsty?" Sarek asked.

I wasn't, still distracted by what he was not saying. "Not terribly."

"I've been giving you water when we passed suitable clear running streams."

It was nice of him, but it almost seemed to make things more difficult. Suddenly, the frustration in me boiled over. "Sarek, what are we going to **do**?"

"Tomorrow, we will-"

"I'm not talking about tomorrow! How do we get out of here?"

A raised brow, as if he understood. "If you need to relieve yourself, the cave entrance is--"

"I mean out of **this**? What about the future!"

A pause, while he considered me. "Amanda, for us, for now, the future comes one day at a time."

I stared at him. He stared blandly back at me.

Maybe I needed to hear it spelled out that bluntly, to believe it. I was, after all, a human who was used to sitting down to a communications console and setting up a conference call between half a dozen planets spread out across the Federation, my far flung colleagues available at the touch of a screen. Live subspace was a prodigious expense, but such conferences were part of my duties as one of the editors of Harvard's academic press when we were peer reviewing articles for publication or deciding on the issue's final contents. I was used to getting into the _Surak_ and being whisked at warp 15 around the galaxy with very little more thought than if it were my own aircar. I was used to living in a multicultural atmosphere, where I taught dozens of species at the Vulcan Science Academy during the day and came home to an ancient Vulcan Fortress filled with the latest technological equipment just to make an evening meal.

I wasn't used to an existence that meant I could only travel as far as I could walk on my sore and aching feet, communicate only the limit of the sound of my unamplified voice, and survive only on what I could gather for myself with my own two hands.

If we'd come to that, I needed to hear it confirmed, because however real the situation, I just was having trouble believing it, or accepting it.

"Yes," Sarek simply said, as if hearing my thoughts.

Hearing it from Sarek's lips, in his familiar voice, finally made it all too real.

I was tired and yes, thirsty and exhausted. And I'd just had some very bad news – however obvious it had been to Sarek since it started. I could have used a little human encouragement, even a "there, there, dear, everything will be all right" instead of this Vulcan pragmatism and Vulcan silence. I rubbed my aching forehead and couldn't help wishing -- though not out loud – if not to have stayed on Terra and married some nice, boring university professor who'd never strand me in the wilderness in a war zone, then at least for an aspirin for my splitting head.

Sarek watched me and in a manner that was telling, didn't offer me any comfort. I knew that meant he thought things were quite as bad as I did.

"Is there any chance we are going to get rescued?" I finally asked quietly.

"A chance, certainly," he said, sounding surprised at such an elementary question. "Eventually the Federation will send a ship, even if the Surak did not get away to raise the alarm. We were due elsewhere. Our presence will be missed. The difficulty is to evade any malicious pursuit, and stay alive until real rescue might appear."

I stared at this matter-of-fact assessment, blinking in confusion, trying to understand it. He made it sound as if we were waiting for a bus. "How can we avoid one group and yet be found by the other?"

He flicked a brow. "That is a problem whose solution has not yet come to me."

"What if they just think we're **dead** and never look? What if they don't find us and go away **again**?" I tried not to raise my voice in frustration, and failed dismally. I didn't ask the most fearful question that had trickled into my brain. Sarek was always precise with words. What did he mean 'real rescue _might_ appear'? Was he saying we could be stranded here forever?

"All pertinent questions," he said, answering at least the spoken question.

I wasn't interested in Vulcanspeak. But suddenly I wasn't angry anymore. It wasn't his fault. And I was too tired to sustain it anyway. "You could just say you don't know."

"I don't know. Yet."

"I'm starving," I said truculently, not much appeased by this admission. And if there was nothing we could do for the moment about the larger issues, then suddenly the more immediate ones seemed more pertinent. "You must be too."

"I am very hungry as well, yes."

"Do you think we'll be able to find things to eat?"

"My mind was on other things today. Tomorrow we will search for food."

"This was a colony world," I said hopefully. "They had crops. There were settlements – cities. Surely there must be **something** left."

"I think not. By the locations of the smoke clouds, those are all gone. And those cities are off limits to us. The neurotoxins apparently have a density sufficient that they aren't wind carried to a great extent, which adds to their suitability as a precision weapon. And is to our advantage. But in the limit of their range, they are quite lethal. We will have to limit ourselves to unpopulated, untouched areas."

I sighed. "'Amanda, the jungle girl' I am not. I hope you were good at your Kahs-wan."

"I was excellent." He said it with a certain ruthlessness. I had to admit I was counting on that.

"This is a different world though."

"Survival is a skill set that is adaptable to a myriad of conditions." He looked at me evaluatingly. "You have it too."

I shook my head, surprised he'd say that. Sarek was the one who, whenever he had a free afternoon, which was rare enough, loved to walk on the Forge, pitting wits against elements. Who would go out at night, to meditate and commune with the predator filled desert. I never went with him on those expeditions. I'd learned early in my Vulcan career that humans just couldn't adapt well to the Forge. It wasn't just a limit to my willingness to learn and undergo hardship. On the Forge, I was more of a liability than an asset, and survival there was hard enough for any Vulcan without a human wife in tow. So I hadn't gone with him in years. I hadn't realized until now, just how that limitation rankled within me. Undermined my sense of self worth. It was hard to be the one who watched everyone else – even small boys – set off onto the Forge while you stayed at home. "I wasn't even a girl scout."

He didn't pretend to misunderstand. "You've adapted well to living in an alien environment, as Vulcan was to you. And on dozens of different worlds on assignments."

"A diplomatic conference isn't a survival expedition."

"It can be. As you have discovered. And I don't mean just this instance."

I looked at him for a moment. "You aren't hearing me. Maybe it's an unproductive human emotion, but I am human. I don't know what is going to happen to us, and I'm scared." I drew a breath, calming myself down. "Don't go all Vulcan on me now. If you don't have a solution, then at least you could sit down next to me."

He did come to me then. "Fear is a perfectly logical emotion to feel in such circumstances. There is certainly danger enough to justify it. But we are not without resources."

I had to laugh at that. "What resources? I'm pretty empty handed. And apart from your glowing rocks – non edible, I take it -- so are you."

"Our wits," he added gravely. "Both sets of them. Our knowledge and experience. I trust they will serve us well."

I sighed and leaned my head against his tattered sleeve. "Given that they and the clothes we stand in are all we have, they had better."

He put his arm around me then, and held me. It didn't solve a thing, so perhaps Sarek couldn't understand why it made me feel so much better. Then, we settled down to a cold, hungry night.

"Still," I said, just before I dropped off, "we're survived so far. It can't get much worse than this."

Sarek didn't answer me.

I was, perhaps, being a little too optimistic.

_To be continued…_

_Review, review, review…_


	6. Chapter 6

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 6**

One good thing about sleeping next to a Vulcan. You never get really cold. Even on the damp uncomfortable ground, they radiate warmth like mini-furnaces. Between my exhaustion and Sarek's comforting warmth, I slept soundly through the night.

I woke the next morning to the unexpected sound of a forest full of birds all singing their hearts out, as if we had been transported into some TechnoDisney holoscenario. I opened my eyes and then almost wished I hadn't.

It hadn't been a bad dream. We really were stranded and on the run from some genocidal planetary civil war.

How did I get into these things?

I drew a deep breath and sat up, slowly. I wished I hadn't done that either. I was stiff as a board from the aircar crash, and in spite of Sarek's hot water bottle comfort, lying on the hard ground all night hadn't helped that. I'd fallen asleep without even taking my shoes off. Now I looked at my legs and flexed my sore foot slowly. It hurt, no doubt about that. But without putting weight on it, it didn't hurt too badly. I slowly took my shoe off, not keen on what I'd find. I was regarding it doubtfully when beside me, Sarek stirred. He hadn't been sleeping, or he'd have woken instantly. Once I got the bird cacophony out of my head, I could hear he was wheezing slightly as he breathed, like a tea kettle just starting to be on the boil. Probably he'd been trying some of his own healing tricks. Now that he was up though, the wheezing faded, under conscious control, no doubt. He still looked a bit flushed to me, but there was nothing I could do about it. And he clearly felt there were more important considerations on today's list of things to do. It was time to take stock. To regroup.

He looked me over, as I had done him. I suspected I looked quite as bad to him as he did to me, but he didn't comment. Then reached out to take my foot that I was still cradling.

"Don't," I said, as he ran a careful hand over it. "That hurts."

"You should have said something."

"Would it have made a difference?" I asked. "You had other things on your mind. So did I, for that matter. And adrenalin is a great pain killer, at least until it wears off. Anyway, I could manage."

"How bad is it?" he asked, frowning.

I couldn't answer him with the kind of specifics that he would have expected of a Vulcan, down to the bone and nerve and tendons affected. I could only answer the human way, anecdotally. "Remember when I got into that kicking and biting match between _Teen Pop_ and _Angel_?" I asked, speaking of two horses we had once owned on Terra, "and they ran me down and stepped on my foot?" He nodded. "Well, it's like that. Over a half ton of horse putting all his weight down on one foot probably equals one Vulcan statue falling over in a terrorist explosion."

His brow contracted at that. "The way you reason, Amanda--"

"I've heard that before," I cut that off. "There's definitely something broken -- here," I ran my own hand over the top of my foot to the outside, where there was a painful spot I was too chary to press. "I can feel the edges chafing against each other when I walk. It may very well be the same bone, re-fractured. It hurts. But it's manageable."

"You can't heal it yourself," Sarek said with dawning realization, as if just remembering that I had no healing trances up my sleeve. I couldn't blame him for forgetting. I wasn't often sick, and we had, after all, been rather busy the last day or so.

"No. Well, yes," I said. "Of course, it will heal on its own. Two ends of a broken bone will always find each other. It would be very serious if it were sticking out. That's why I don't want you to press on it. I can feel it –"I ran a finger gently over the top of my foot – "right here. Here's the break. It's not going to heal as well as if I went in to have it lasered. It will heal with a bump, no doubt. It will probably take a long time to heal too. But I'll keep my shoe on, to keep the swelling down and as a sort of splint. And I can walk. All things considered, we could be in much worse shape."

"That is true," Sarek admitted.

"I don't know about you, maybe you're not feeling it. But right now, what really hurts is how stiff I am. You could help me up." I put out my hands and let him. He seemed a little stiff himself. Perhaps he was just cold. My ribs were sore too, but I really winced when I tentatively put weight on my foot. I could feel the bone grating. But as I painfully flexed it, it just settled into an ache with every step, a hello, do you hear me, I'm not right here, kind of ache. Definitely like a horse had stepped on it. But as I stretched and twisted, every muscle ached too.

"Let me rephrase. Both hurt about the same," I shrugged. "But all horsekeepers have a permanently lame foot for one reason or another from being stomped on. And I kept horses most of my life, before I left Terra to live on your sand dune. I've had similar things before. Let's just say I'm reasonably functional, so long as you don't expect too much."

Sarek gave me a considering look. "Today we should scout for food. Though you can stay here if you wish."

"Not on your life. If it's food we're getting, I'm going to be right there. Besides," I said, "I don't think we should separate, do you? To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the idea. I don't want to."

"Nor do I." He drew a breath and coughed a little.

"How are you?" I asked.

"As you, functional enough," he said dismissively. "Let's go."

And I knew that would be all I got out of him on that. Short of stripping him down and looking over his bruises – and I'm sure he had as many as me, since I doubted he was going to risk the immobility of a healing trance under these circumstances for anything that wasn't lethal – there was no way I could make him tell me. And if I did know, there was nothing I could do.

The day outside was beautiful, and I was grateful that we weren't foraging in a cold slogging rain. I reached for the one thing I'd been eyeing all yesterday – the bramble berries that seemed to be hanging on nearly every bush. In the glinting sun, and with my hunger, they looked even more luscious than before. I broke off one and handed it to Sarek. If I'd been alone, I would have tried one myself, but one handy thing about a Vulcan is that they have that supercomputer brain hooked to their taste buds. Sarek could have probably given me the chemical composition of anything he ate. He took a tiny round oval of one – no bigger than a single pearl of a regular Terran raspberry, and tasted it judiciously, while I stood looking up at him, trying not to salivate while I awaited his verdict.

"It's safe," he finally said.

I gave a sigh of relief. "Really? You're sure?"

"Quite. Not a single dangerous compound."

"Well, then," I said with some enthusiasm, "Breakfast is served."

At first we just picked and ate, picked and ate. Then with the edge off my hunger, I began the age old human practice of gathering.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I was wearing an overskirt of a net-like fabric. Looped up, it made a perfect carry bag for harvesting berries. Sarek could only pick enough to fill his hands – and his mouth. His tunic wasn't cut for berry transportation. But I could carry quarts. We picked together, piling them between us in the mesh. There were plenty of birds competing for the berries along with us, but the supply seemed inexhaustible. We gathered enough in a half hour to feed four Vulcans, and one hungry human and then sat down like civilized creatures by the side of a little rill and stuffed ourselves, interspersed with handfuls of water. The run rose further and with water in my stomach and a quart of so of berries, and the sun warming my hair and soothing my bruises, I felt almost human.

Sarek was still eating with that absorbed concentration he gets when he's really hungry. I leaned against his knees and closed my eyes and had a little nap while he finished up the remainder of the net.

Boom.

Birds squawked, the ground shook, and Sarek leapt to his feet, jostling me awake along with the explosion. I yelped a little as I took the weight too abruptly on my foot. "Oh, not again," I muttered, leaning against him. "We really **must** go somewhere else for vacation next year. The neighbors here are too loud."

"Amanda," Sarek chided at such levity, his eyes searching for the site of the impact. It must have been far enough distant that we couldn't see it. Though we could feel its concussion in the planet.

"Would you rather I cried?" I asked. Because I was thinking I'd done pretty well so far in the emotion department, not that we'd had time for a nice human emotional meltdown. "And after a while, even war gets old."

He flicked a brow in concession to that.

And it was true. At first, when a war starts, every civilized fiber of your being rebels, outraged at the notion that people are so wantonly trying to destroy each other, with you caught in the middle. The idea that someone is trying to kill you – you! – is just that incredible. Even for me, who with Sarek had faced more than my share of xenophobia and contention before this little incident. But not even humans can keep up outrage for long. There just isn't enough emotion, even in humans, to sustain the feeling. You become numb to it. It becomes ordinary. And perhaps I'd been living among Vulcans for too long, but it also had become contemptible. Not worth my time. All these people, wasting all their energy in hate, in petty rancor and squabbling. Fighting over something that they could have had for the sharing.

For the next few days, so long as the explosions didn't come too close to us, and with our little pocket of forest spared, we came to be almost inured to the fireworks display elsewhere.

We had so many other things to do.

Sarek even left me alone while he spent days looking along stream beds and caves and outcroppings, wherever rock was near the surface, for a kind of sparking rock he could use to start a fire. Apparently such a rock is as common as sand on Vulcan, in the right places, there for the picking. And also available on Terra. He couldn't quite believe the trouble he was having finding the equivalent here. I thought about rubbing two sticks together – sticks we had in plenty – but he was certain such a rock must be here and he would find it. Sticks of course are not common on Vulcan. And Vulcans are not that different from humans in being more inclined to want to do things their own way.

I had to admit that the nights, particularly when it rained, were nippy enough that a fire would be welcome, but I was too busy with other things to worry about a fire that wasn't yet essential, at least to me, given Sarek gave off a nice glow of his own to warm me. So I left firestarting, by stick or rock, to him. I'm sure Sarek was freezing, even in this balmy air. Finding his firerocks became something of an obsession with him.

I prospected for food. The berries were so abundant it seemed they would never run out, but there were problems with them. They weren't very filling. They didn't satisfy. They tasted lovely on your tongue, but there wasn't much to them. And if you ate too many of them, the seeds inside, while not poisonous, were upsetting to the stomach. At least mine, and when I mentioned it to Sarek, he didn't disagree, which was Vulcan code for agreeing.

So while he was rock prospecting, I looked for other food sources. I found a few bushes with a mealy fruit that was a little more filling and easier on the stomach. It had a large pit that Sarek said was poisonous, but no more than the arsenical compounds found in peach pits and apple seeds. The fruit, he said, was safe. So we now had two courses to our meals, fruit and fruit. You know. For that all important variety.

I found some bushes that held papery nut like objects that I submitted to Sarek for his taste bud analysis. He said they were innocuous but unripe. I tried one myself, desperate for anything new to eat, but he was right. It was green and nasty. I wasn't yet hungry enough to swallow it. I spat it out.

When not looking for food, I tried to make our little camp a happy home away from home. I gathered springy bows and armfuls of sweet smelling grass to dry and piled them high, since the ground was proving to be too hard, cold and damp for a good bed, not to mention rocky. Not the right rocks, of course.

I used these wrong rocks to make a fire circle in the one spot where there was a draft hole in the shelter roof, in the sure expectancy that Sarek would find the right rocks that he was looking for. I swept debris away from it with a few branches.

When that was done, I looked for my next greatest goal, finding something to hold water. In there I was frustrated. None of the leaves were big enough. I looked for hollowed out rocks in the stream, without success. I knew you could make dishes out of fired clay, but the soil here didn't seem very claylike and we had no fire yet anyway. I supposed we could make wooden trenchers, but that would mean having tools to shape the wood. Sarek didn't even have a pocket knife on him – he hadn't been prepared for anything but a treaty signing, where wearing a knife, even a small one, was hardly conducive to civilized discourse. Nor, I must confess, did I have so much as a nail file on my person.

I resolved henceforth never to leave my bedroom without one of those little devices that fits into the palm of your hand and converts into knives and awls and files and a sunbrella and no doubt a portable tent complete with comfy beds and four course meals, and perhaps even a warp shuttle in the higher models, all with the flick of a finger. But unfortunately my bedroom, and the store where I might buy such a thing, was half a galaxy away. Something for my to do list. Never go to a treaty signing again without survival gear.

I was still hopeful for some sort of rescue before we descended into stone tools and bearskins – not that we'd seen any bears, or even any animal other than birds. I had seen some small tracks in the mud by the stream, but whatever animals were making them were too elusive for me to see. Skins aside, just the stone tools to make fire were proving elusive.

Finally, after five days of intensive searching, when he stopped only to eat and sleep, Sarek came back to camp well before sunset for a change, and this time with a lump of stone in each hand.

"You found them?" I asked.

"Watch." He knelt down on my fire circle and struck the two rocks together. A spark leapt between them.

I cheered as if he had just won a Nobel and a Zi Magni prize together, and even Sarek looked pleased.

I had plenty of fire starting materials prepared – the downy puffs of a seed plant that was unfortunately inedible, dried grasses, all the kindling and small wood I could haul. I'd stored it inside the shelter to keep dry.

It took a good half hour, and about 1,000 strikes of those two rocks, with me blowing hopefully on sparks landing on the dandelion like puffs, and Sarek wearing out the rocks setting of showers of sparks, and me blowing too hard at first and then too soft and him not getting the spark timing right and both of us ready to bash the other with the rocks in our frustration, well, at least I was, before we finally got a sustained ember and then a tongue of flame. I hastily fed it more down puffs and tinder before it faded away. In ten more minutes we finally could put on branches and not feel like it was going to collapse into ash.

"This is one fire that is going to stay banked into coals in the morning," I said, sitting back. "We're not going through that again. I thought you were an expert?"

Sarek just sat back and held out his hands. "These rocks are not as flammable as those on Vulcan."

"Everything is better on Vulcan," I couldn't resist teasing. He didn't disagree. "We'll get better at it," I promised.

It was lovely, having a fire. It made our dinner of fruit and fruit tastier. It warmed up the shelter so Sarek didn't look quite so pinched and cold. We sat back and stared into it, mesmerized like prehistoric creatures. We suddenly felt more civilized.

"If we only had a pot," I said absently, "this would be a five star hotel."

We drifted off to sleep quite happy for once, with Sarek probably warm for the first time in a week. Only to be shaken rudely awake a few hours later, and not gently. Even under the foot or so of piled boughs and grasses I could feel the ground moving. I sat up as best I could, and ended up grabbing Sarek, as the ground rocked violently again.

"Is it an earthquake?" I asked him, nearly panicked, thinking of my last near burial. "We should go outside."

"No. Stay here." He ran out.

Sometimes Sarek really does have no sense. With memories of being buried alive still strong in me, I didn't care what dangers might be out there. I followed him.

Outside it seemed the sky was on fire. There was a huge battle going on above in the air, more ships, more fighting than we had ever seen before. And we could see fireballs from a dozen bombardments on the ground. One was closer than we had ever seen one. Terrifyingly close. We both stared at it, at the ashes and bits of flame falling through the air.

Honestly, where do you run, when all around you is destruction?

Our shelter was convenient and chosen partly for that – it had that little spring-fed rill running through the corner, it had a convenient hole for a fire, it had become home for me. Dump a human down anywhere in the galaxy – dump one down a well, and they'll set up a bed and somewhere to sit and probably a picture on the wall, or a cave painting, and call it home. But it did have one disadvantage in Sarek's eyes – it wasn't deep enough.

Faced with the threat of a forest fire, he grabbed my hand and took us away from the too close explosion, back to that other shelter, the one with the muddy boot print water source, where we'd hidden out before. I'd never have found it, in the dark, in the night, but Sarek did. We sat there, cold and shivering and miserable, hiding in a hole like rabbits, smelling smoke even deeper underground as we were, and feeling the earth shake and yes, drinking that muddy boot print water. People who are desperate will do anything.

We didn't talk. I didn't much think. I just waited, for the world to come to an end in a searing flash or a jumble of crushing stone. Or for the bombing to stop.

_To be continued…._


	7. Chapter 7

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 7**

The battle and bombardment went on for days.

But then, finally, it did stop.

It was hard to believe at first. Hour after hour, day after day we had sat, straining our senses, listening for sounds, smelling smoke when fires got close, feeling the vibrations of explosions as things impacted with the earth, and as the ships fired on each other in the sky, while the battle went on. And on. And on.

Sarek sat in the same position, barely moving. Meditating, at least part of the time. I was sunk in a silence of my own. But after a while I recognized a quality to his mood. That it was worse than mine.

"It's not your fault," I said, in a lull between bombings.

He raised his head from his steepled fingers and looked at me, as if I'd spoken in a foreign tongue.

Of course, I often forget. English **is** a foreign tongue to him.

"It's not your doing," I said in Vulcanur.

"My doing," He brought his hands down from his meditative position as if eager to discuss it. "Certainly blame must be affixed to whoever started the hostilities," he said. "But I was responsible for finding a solution."

"You **did** find a solution," I insisted. "You brought them to the table. You weren't responsible for terrorists hijacking the peace agreement."

Sarek tilted his head, a sign he didn't agree. "I am reviewing the negotiation discussions and trying to determine if I could have worked harder with those members--"

"Their government recalled them!"

"Before they were recalled. Or even after. There is no statute of limitations on seeking a resolution with all parties."

I shook my head in frustration. "You certainly can't be expected to work with delegates after they're recalled by their own government for intractability. You worked with those people for twenty hours a day, for three months. You gave them every chance for a reasonable resolution. They didn't need to do this." I sighed. "Certainly, if you think reviewing the discussions might help in some similar situation in the future, go ahead. But don't blame yourself."

"In the future," Sarek said, a new tone in his voice. As if I'd said something ridiculous. Incredulous.

I looked at him. My husband knew humans had scant appreciation for being constantly quoted odds, so he didn't, with me. But I knew him well enough to understand the tones of his voice, however subtle. "Are you saying we don't have a future?"

He looked at me, and didn't answer.

I wasn't ready to accept that. "We **have** a future," I insisted. "I don't care if it's no more than the next minute. There's always a future, until there isn't."

He looked at me and then looked away. I supposed that was one disadvantage of having a brain that could track odds like a supercomputer. When the odds turned against you, it was more discouraging. Where humans always could be blinded by hope as opposed to facing odds or logic.

"You can tell me its human nonsense. You can quote me the odds if you want. Twenty percent. Ten percent. I know we're in trouble. I understand. But we're not done for yet."

"You didn't want to come," Sarek said, sidestepping that subject to one that had no doubt been tearing at him, in spite of his Vulcan controls.

"Oh, Sarek," I put out a hand to him. "I **always** say that, at first. Don't you remember?"

"But you were right," he insisted. "You predicted something of this sort."

"So did you. You knew this would be a difficult assignment. That the chances of success were limited. You said at the start it would be dangerous."

"If we hadn't come, perhaps there wouldn't have been this war. And we would not be in this situation. It might have been better for all."

"It isn't your fault. We had to come. Sarek, it was your job. Your duty." That hit the right note, and silenced him momentarily. His shoulders dropped a bit, relaxing from their tensed state.

"It was a duty," he admitted.

"You couldn't have lived with yourself if you hadn't done it. You wouldn't be you if you hadn't come." That much was true. I sat back myself. "And I'm not sorry I came, either. I would rather be here, with you, in this **mud hole**," I smiled, just a little, to take the sting out of my words, "than anywhere else without you. I couldn't live with myself if you were in this mess alone, and I was safe on Vulcan."

"Illogical," Sarek said. But his expression had softened, just a bit.

"And you love me for it," I countered. "Or at least love me, anyway. You know you do."

He didn't admit it. But he took my hand. The cave shook from another explosion, and then the noise was too loud to talk above it.

So we went back to waiting. And waiting. And waiting for the war to stop. Or for it to be over. One way or another.

And then finally there was silence. Real silence. That lasted.

We couldn't quite believe it. Or trust it. At first I wondered if our hearing had simply failed. But we were two difference species, with two very different acoustical sensory systems. They couldn't both fail at the same time. I looked at Sarek. He looked at me. We didn't say anything. For me, not to jinx it. For Sarek, because I think he'd been edging past hope.

Six hours of silence passed. Eight. Ten. Twelve. There was rain, torrential rain. The rain ran down into our cave and we edged further back. We finally smelled damp ashes rather than active burning. I slept a few hours. I woke. It had been sixteen hours since the last explosion. We still didn't trust that it was over. We drank more muddy water. Twenty four hours. We slept again, both of us. We woke again. Strained to listen. There was nothing. Even the air smelled clearer.

"Let's go out," I said finally. We were both weak from lack of food and suffering from hypothermia. We really had no choice.

Sarek was more cautious than me, but even he hadn't heard or sensed anything. And he was freezing and starving more than me.

We went out.

Outside the world looked like it had snowed in summer. Ashes everywhere, green underneath. The birds were still with us, but subdued. Due to the rain, everything was damp gray over the greenery, and the ground was slushy with gray ash.

I moved to get a real drink from a stream but Sarek stopped me. "We don't know if that water is safe," he said. "It runs too far over ground, exposed."

"Then lets go home," I urged. "I want to go home." I meant it in more ways than one, but he took the more pertinent meaning.

After a moment he nodded.

It took us about two hours to get back to our camp. There was more ash there, but it wasn't burned. The forest fire hadn't reached us, except for the wind blown ash. We went into our cave, sweeping ash away from the entrance. Deeper inside, our beds were still there, untouched. Our wood and tinder still sat against the wall. The cache of food I had gathered for the next day's breakfast still where I'd left it. The mealy fruit was fine. The berries in their net were mushy, but not quite rotten yet. Sarek built a fire. I washed the fruit in our rill. We sat there, still a bit shell shocked and ate and drank in silence.

Then we slept, more deeply now that we were home, basking in the warmth of the fire.

And ate again. And slept and ate.

The explosions didn't come back. We felt better after we had some food down us, and the chill leached from our bones, but we needed to go further afield to find more food.

But Sarek stopped me. "I think we have to see what that fire was before you go off on your own. How close it was. There was no settlement supposed to be there."

"It could have been just a bomb gone astray."

"I think we need to see. It was too close."

I could think of reasons for it, and reasons against it, but I was too ambivilent to marshal an argument either way. It was just easier to go along.

We walked for a couple of hours, gathering and eating some of the mealy fruits as we went. There was more ash as we moved along. Clearly whatever had exploded had also triggered a forest fire, and the wind had blown the ashes this way. But then, still hours of walking from the actual bomb site, we smelled a smell that we couldn't ignore. Nothing living smelled like that. It was the carrion scent of death. Sarek stopped and I stopped. We looked uneasily at each other. And then, hesitantly, we moved on. Until we came across the first of them.

People. What had been people. Perhaps fifty, sixty. They'd been running, away from the bombing and the fires. Many of them had fallen coming toward us, dropping in their tracks as they fled. But others had clearly died in combat with each other. Some looked as if they had torn each other to pieces with their bare hands. The expressions on their faces, the ones we could see, were insane.

It had rained since they'd fallen. But I could see remnants on their clothes of a substance with a lavender tint.

The neurotoxins. It had destroyed their minds. They'd gone mad with it, turning on each other, even as they were fleeing. Till it killed them.

I jumped back as if burned.

"Sarek!"

"I see," he said grimly.

"I thought you said there was no nearby settlement?"

"It must have been a small one. An offshoot. Not on the records. They must have fled for miles," he added. He was looking at their shoes and pant legs, covered with mud and ash up to the knee. "Before the toxins --."

I shivered violently. "I want to go."

"Yes. We must. We can't stay here."

I turned. But then I stopped. We had nothing but the clothes we stood up in. And behind us was a treasure trove. Clothes and shoes and – who knew what they might be carrying in pockets or on their persons. It was a horrible thought, but I couldn't help thinking it. I looked at Sarek, the question in my eyes.

He shook his head. "We can't touch them."

"We could wash the things," I ventured. "The clothes. You're wearing nothing but rags. And you're cold."

"It wouldn't be safe. That toxin is probably not water soluble. Washing would not likely rid it from fabric. And it penetrates the skin. It's not safe."

I nodded, sadly, and took a few steps. And then looked back again. "We can't just leave them. Shouldn't we – I don't know. Bury them or cover them with rocks or burn them or--" Even as I said it, I knew it was impractical. There were so many. But so was just leaving the bodies, fallen across the grass where they'd died. It wasn't human, to do that.

"We can't touch them." He took my arm. "We cannot stay here. And to burn them might leach the toxin on their persons into an aerosol form too close to our camp. It's not safe. So far we have been fortunate, that it is designed not to be wind carried. But if we burn them, we risk releasing it again into the atmosphere close to us. No. We must leave them as they are.

So we left them, staring up in the sky of the world they thought to claim their own. Well they had claimed it. At least the six feet where they lay fallen they had claimed.

We went back to our camp. Shoveled out more ash. Built up our fire. Scrubbed ourselves down in the chance that we had picked up any of the toxin, for whatever good it might have done. Gathered more fruit and washed it. Had another meal. But the whole feeling we'd had, over the few days immediately before that bombardment, that of odd safety and almost ordinariness as we built our little camp in the wilderness, and filled it with fire and food, had fled. We were subdued and silent, and that night I had nightmares, thinking of the bodies in the woods.

It rained for the next couple of days. The ash disappeared in our area, but we were cold and uncomfortable and we stayed pretty much in the shelter and slept when we didn't have to forage for food or fuel or to eat. We both could use some catching up in that regard. It took a couple of days for us to realize that there hadn't been an explosion on the ground or in the air since that last huge firefight. More days passed, and there was nothing.

"Is the war over?" I asked Sarek.

He shook his head, human style. Not in negation, but because he didn't know.

And there were still no bombings.

We'd gleaned all the berries around and all the mealy fruit, and I had to go farther afield to find food, but there was still plenty and hopefully more to come. The paper nut bushes began to be ripe, and there was a grass that looked like it might be a grain, when it changed from green to gold. Sarek tasted a few raw kernels of it, and pronounced it edible. But the rain and the fire had spoiled most of it, and there were only a few patches that I kept an eye on, to gather when it became ripe.

I had been watching some bee-like insects that visited various flowers, and I had followed them to see that they had some sort of nest in papery lanterns they constructed on top of earth mounds. Hunger made me bold enough to surround one with a series of smoking branches and drive the insects away. I came back with a piece of what looked and tasted to me like honest-to-god honeycomb. I was hungry enough to try it without waiting for Sarek's analysis. When I brought the dripping comb to him, he tasted it and concurred. Honey.

"How did you think to do that," he asked, when I explained about the smoking branch. "Had you gathered honey before?"

"I read it in a book," I answered.

"Keeping bees?" he asked.

"A book of fiction."

He flicked a brow dismissively.

"It was useful this time, for us."

So we had another food source. I was feeling hopeful about that. Grain and nuts, soon to be ripe. Honey. There were less and less brambles and the mealy fruits were getting scarce but still we still had plenty of fruit, and I wasn't too worried about that. But I had begun dreaming of food, real substantial food, and was thinking seriously of birds' eggs. So far I hadn't gotten quite desperate enough to try that on Sarek. If he didn't want to eat them, I might just eat them myself. But the honey put that decision off for a few days. I mixed fruit with honey, for a change from fruit without honey. I mixed a few handfuls of grain with honey, and Sarek and I both wolfed it down like hungry bears. I wished we had more grain and went further afield looking for ripe unspoiled patches. I got bolder about raiding honey nests, and would go in now with just a single smoking branch. But it was all still just sugar. It wasn't enough, and we were always hungry now, no matter how much fruit we ate. Clearly something had to change.

Meanwhile, we had gone days without a single explosion and were beginning to get used to the silence, and even feel as if there had never been a war, or other people. Just us, and the continual search for food, which took us further afield and further away from each other. So we were totally shocked when a fireball roared across the sky and landed just to the south of us.

The explosion was loud enough that it rocked the earth. I was staring stupidly up at the track in the sky where the projectile had passed. Sarek came running out of nowhere, grabbed me, knocked me to the ground and covered me, as if he alone could save me. Even Vulcans succumb to instinct. Though being flattened by a Vulcan nearly three times my weight – Vulcans have denser bones and muscles though they can look surprisingly lean and fragile, and Sarek was stockier than most Vulcans to begin with. – didn't exactly qualify as saving me. "Sarek, you're hurting me." I complained, even as we both shuddered from the noise and shockwaves of the explosion.

He didn't answer or move. For a moment, I nearly panicked, and then I realized that his attention was riveted to the not far distant fireball, his eyes darting to the leaves swaying with the wind. I realized with a chill the crash was to windward of us, and he was dreading that a purple cloud might appear and that would be the end of us. But minutes passed and nothing came.

"I believe that was a ship that came down," Sarek said, as if in astonishment. He got to his feet and helped me up. And he moved toward the fireball.

I ran after him. If it was, these were still our enemies, or at least enemies of someone. They weren't going to be exactly cordial to us, no matter what side they'd been on, and weren't these the people we were trying to evade? I wanted to say all this, but Sarek was moving forward too fast, and so I just struggled to keep up with him.

It took us a couple of hours to reach the crash site. We saw bits of wreckage long before we came to the main debris field. It covered a wide area, though the ship hadn't been large. Sarek pronounced it one of the small corvette warships, perhaps only a half dozen men. There were, of course, no survivors.

"I thought the battle was over," I said, surveying the smoking wreckage.

"This ship must have been knocked out of orbit, no doubt in the battle. Gravity has finally pulled it down into the atmosphere, where it broke up. There would be no survivors. But there might be something we could use."

That spurred me on, though it was a grisly treasure hunt. Not that there were bodies – the heat of reentry had been tremendous – but there were enough things that were recognizable enough even though most were far too damaged to be of any use. But the sight of even traces of once erstwhile civilization were both oddly painful and stirred an avaricial greed, at least in me, for something, anything that would make our lives easier.

Sarek began searching for usable electronics. Now that our enemies appeared to have left the field, he hoped to cobble something together for a transmitter. Though what we could find that would have power to punch into subspace and reach the Federation and not be detectable by anyone local was moot. It was something he could do, and so I left him to it.

I wandered around with more prosaic goals. Weeks of nothing but fruit to eat had made me ravenous for protein. Metal cable for fishing lines, or bird snares. Fish hooks. I didn't care. There were enough metal sheets that we might build a reasonable shelter, if we had fasteners and if our cave wasn't feeling so homey now. I flipped one over half heartedly, setting it aside with the others that were reasonably intact. Underneath it was more rubble, smaller sheets from what had perhaps been lockers. And came across a jumble of flat metal boxes, which must have been in the lockers and had survived relatively intact. I crouched down and my eyes widened. "Sarek! Sarek!"

He came as I was scrabbling through the debris, stacking the battered boxes up. "One, two, three, four!"

They were some sort of supply kits, emergency supplies for a shuttle or lifepod. Sarek eyed the labeling on the boxes critically, and then shrugged, unimpressed. Clearly they were not what he was looking for. "We'll review the contents later." He picked them up and tossed them on the pile of things we were salvaging and went back to his electronics hunt.

The afternoon ended too soon. It was getting dark; we had to find shelter. It was too far to walk back "home" and come back the next day. Sarek still seemed engrossed in his search, and so I set up as best I could a sort of shelter upwind from the rank smell of burning electronics and metal. I used some panels that had survived being melted, propping and wedging them against an overhanging rock face. It wouldn't have survived a rainstorm, or even much wind, but it was a calm night. I pulled out all the rocks and brush, covered the earth with handfuls of leaves and grass and settled the piles into some reasonably padded beds. Then with the basic work done for the evening, and with a flutter of anticipation that I hadn't felt since a child on holidays, I opened the boxes.

No Christmas day could have equaled my delight. So many of the things I'd been wishing for – little things that you'd pay pittance for, if you even had to buy them. A set of collapsible dishes, that unfolded, could carry water, or even take heat. You never know how much you miss containers until you have none. Just a bowl to carry water is a treasure. And a bowl that you could put over a fire is worth a king's ransom. I could have kissed the simple thing. I did. And couldn't wait to use it. I found a running stream and bought back a bowl of water and carrying it back I felt like a genius, or an acolyte holding the Holy Grail. I could have danced for joy. Foot aside.

And there were dozens of similar treasures. A pair of scissors. A laser cutter and a knife. A short ax. A couple of sheets of some presumably waterproof and thermal, heat reflective material that could be fashioned into a tent, or used as a blanket. Matches, and a powered firelighter that I knew with one click, could bring a flame. I didn't bother to click it; fuel was too precious to waste.

One metal box held medical supplies. Bandages, ointments, some few drugs. I set those aside for now.

One box had the insets for weapons and ammunition. But only the insets. The box itself was empty. The emptiness was a disappointment. I hadn't been hoping for guns, and Sarek would have disapproved and perhaps refused to take them, but still it was disappointing to find nothing in the box.

I opened the last metal box and my jaw dropped. If the last one had been empty, this one more than made up for it.

Food. Rows of packets, that when the seal was broken, would heat up and be ready in seconds. Containers of water and others of some liquid that had that had pictures of fruit on the front, so must be some fruit drink. Bags and bags of some flat bred or fiber wafers, or crackers of some sort. I couldn't read the script, but the given our enemies were humanoid stock, it all had to be edible. We'd gotten no adverse warnings before taking the mission not to eat the local food. I passed my hand lovingly over them and tried to decipher the pictures in the growing dark. And then I realized we didn't have to sit in the dark. We had the means for light.

I gathered up all the brush and branches I could find, cleared an area in front of my shelter, banked it with stones and added my brush. And then, I used my firelighter.

The brush wasn't quite as dry as I'd hoped but in five minutes, I had a fire. Sarek's head went up, at the smell of wood smoke – so different than the smell of the burning ship -- and the sight and sound of the fire. It was almost dark, not too dark for Vulcan eyes, bred to moonless nights, but he came over anyway. I opened a bag of the wafers, two hot food packets at random, and two containers of the fruit drink and scrounged in the mess kit for a couple of eating implements that resembled spoons with little fork tines on the ends. I was unaccountably delighted, not just with the food, but that we didn't have to eat it with our fingers. "Soup's on."

"How did you?" He asked, amazed, and then his eyes went to the boxes. "Yes, of course. I didn't think."

"You had something bigger on your mind. We humans have always been prone to more prosaic, immediate gratifications. Come on, I'm hungry."

He sat down beside me and reached for a spoon.

It may have been reconstituted, over preserved, mass produced cardboard that once upon a time, when we lived another kind of life, we might have politely choked down, but, honestly, now I felt no meal had ever tasted so good. Sarek's eyes met mine at the first spoonful, his pupils widened even more in the dark and then we both just tucked in. My spoon soon scraped the bottom of the metal-like paper of the package and I unreservedly licked the packaging clean.

Sarek was taken aback by this – I, who used to remark pointedly on table manners when I was bringing up our son, but after a moment he did the same to his paper, one emerald tongue cleaning up every drop. Then his eyes fell on the metal box, ruthlessly cataloging the contents and his eyes strayed over the other food packages, still unopened. "I don't suppose we could…"

"Oh, why not?" I said recklessly. "Let's splurge."

So we opened another and ate that one more slowly, while I showed Sarek all the presents I'd found in the kit. My stomach was too shrunken to actually eat all of the second meal, so I gave the rest to Sarek, who wolfed it down with as much hunger as the first and then proceeded to eat every single cracker in the bag I'd opened, as if the food would melt away if he didn't finish it all. Though he gave the food locker another speculative glance, he didn't suggest more. He joined me under the metal overhang, and we stared blissfully at the flames of our fire, warm and comfortable and well fed for once without hours of tedious labor to build a fire, or find food.

"Isn't it wonderful?" I asked him absently, thinking about that contentedly. "Just like home."

He didn't misunderstand me, but he turned and looked down at me, one brow raised as if he didn't quite believe me.

"You know what I mean," I said. "Civilization."

He gave that minute held tilt that was a Vulcan shrug and settled back against me and stared at the flames, for once content.

"How did you do in **your** search?" I asked.

"I found a quantity of components that I believe may have survived re-entry," he said. "I will begin reviewing them at first light."

I wondered if I dared ask if that meant we might get rescued, but I decided against it. If there was a certain chance of it, Sarek would not only tell me, but give me the odds. That he was silent told me all I needed to know. I pushed back my thoughts on that, and settled on more prosaic concerns.

"You know what else was in that kit?" I asked conversationally. "Soap. And even a comb. Tomorrow, I'm going to have a real bath."

His brow raised and he looked at me speculatively. "And I was just becoming used to your hair accessories of dried leaves and brambles."

"Watch it, buster," I warned him. "That kit also had scissors. And I can't think of a better time for me to bob my hair." I made as if to reach for them, and Sarek's hand flashed out, quicker than any human could learn to expect. He could still startle me in that.

"Indeed you will not," Sarek said, my hand in his. "You are my wife."

"Prove it," I dared, turning my hand to match his, palm to palm in Vulcan style and raising my lips to his, for an equally human kiss.

He brought his hand to mine and his head down to mine, and then his body moved over mine in a way he hadn't since all this began. And he did prove it, quite expertly. Twice, which for our present starved and exhausted selves was quite a complement.

Then we slept the sleep of the dead in each other's arms, for once not aching with hunger, or dreaming of rescue. In the downed wreckage of the ship, at least a little rescue had come. For the moment.

And with a warm fire before us, we didn't notice that this night was a little chillier than before.

_To be continued…_

_Review, review, review_


	8. Chapter 8

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 8**

The next morning Sarek had resurveyed the site and decided he had indeed gleaned all the usable electronics from it. Then he put a question to me. We sat down to "lunch" to discuss it.

Lunch wasn't usually on our schedule – we ate breakfast at first light, and dinner at sunset, and rarely met up at mid-day anymore. But I heated water in our new containers, and tossed in some berries. It was wonderful to be able to have a hot drink in the morning rather than gulping handfuls of cold water from a stream. Sarek, particularly, appreciated it, and neither one of us could quite adjust to the novelty. We nibbled on some fruit and a bag of the flatbread while Sarek explained what he'd found and the transmitting device he wanted to build.

The question foremost in his mind was should he set up here, or should we haul our finds back to our "camp" and build it there.

It may have seemed like a trivial question, but it was a big one for us. There we had a natural, sturdy shelter. Here we had only the metal shelter. We could reinforce it, but it was nowhere near as sturdy. There we had forest, and the resulting food and fuel. The immediate area we were in was treeless. Perhaps the small, swift running creek nearby flooded in the spring and kept the ground too damp for new trees. Though now the turf around us seemed dry and springy with deep grass.

There was forest and the resulting fuel and food about half a mile away. But to scout for and set up a new shelter there would take time, perhaps days. Sarek was eager to start crafting now, if I was amenable.

Food and fuel were the biggest issues to me. On the one hand, our previous camp had had plenty of food and fuel, at least at first. But even there the food had been becoming well gleaned in the short time we'd been there. No doubt we would have had to move on there too, probably sooner than later. There seemed to be less food here, but perhaps I just hadn't looked enough. It seemed it would need to be hauled for greater distances in any event.

On the emotional side, I really liked our old location. Mostly because it was familiar, and seemed like a haven, but for its practical considerations too. The spring in our cave was small, but good. The water was clean, and as the spring rose inside the rock shelter, it was uncontaminated by falling debris. The shelter wasn't deep, but it had a base of rock, and thus wasn't too damp. We could have a fire in it. It was sturdy and felt safe to me. I mentioned these considerations to Sarek, not sidestepping the emotional considerations.

He didn't disagree. But on the side for staying here was that we could still salvage and cannibalize things off the downed cruiser, without a long walk to get back here. And we also didn't really have a good way to get what we'd salvaged back to our present camp.

We turned over all these pros and cons and decided, at least for the present, while Sarek was building his device, to stay.

We spent the morning scouting for a place for him to work. We settled finally on a small part of the half crashed hull of the spacecraft that had survived. The metal had cooled some since we had first arrived and the smell was not as bad as it had been then. Together we tugged and lifted and propped up some metal sheets. I spent some time insulating them at their joins with woven panels of reeds and branches, packed in with mud. Sarek eyed this critically, mud not being something you'd find on his sandy world. But when the mud was dry, he had a reasonably wind and rainproof work shed. It was well out of the way of the smoke of our cooking and heating fires, which Sarek was concerned might further damage the already battered components. We rigged him up a table of sorts, for a workbench, and a stool, because I couldn't see him sitting on the cold ground.

He then helped me gather wood for the day, and settled down to his work, while I went off to see what food I could scavenge.

I didn't really want to use the emergency kit food, thinking perhaps we should save it for…well, an emergency. After all, an injury, an illness, bad weather, a future attack could keep us from foraging. That food might be the difference between real hunger and starvation or survival.

My good intentions were one thing. Practicality was another.

After a couple of days of searching, I concluded I'd been right. Food was not as plentiful in the area we were in. I had to roam pretty far into the woods to find it, and then lug it back. Often I came back with more wood than food, even though Sarek was gathering wood enough for our fires before he started his transmitter work in the mornings.

Since I wasn't loaded down with that much food, and I was going deep into the woods anyway, my practice was to carry back as much as I could, as far as possible, whether food, or if I couldn't find food, then wood. If I wasn't able to carry back all that I found, when I did find a good cash of food, I dumped the wood. But at least the wood that I then dumped was closer to camp when I could carry it back.

Even if I found a good cash of nuts or berries, I had trouble bringing back all that I wanted to carry. Sometimes I had to make several trips to and from camp. All this became exhausting and painful. It just wasn't working.

When we ran short, we ended up delving into our emergency food.

And within a few days, my feet were on active rebellion. Not to mention my shoulders and arms. Later that evening, while Sarek meditated and the fire burned low, I considered what I could do to alleviate the situation. My eyes fell on the metal boxes of the survival kits. Sarek had appropriated two for his electronics. I still kept our emergency food in the largest, away from bugs and other potential predators. That left one. I considered them as my eyes got heavy with sleep. And in the morning when I woke I had a plan.

After Sarek had gone on to his work, I stayed behind, rather than food prospect. It had occurred to me that one of the metal boxes, opened fully, was about the size to make a nice flat bed for a cart. I cut out a metal sheet for a stabilizer, and fastened the open box to the top of it. That left me needing only an axel, something to pull the cart, and of course, wheels.

An axel was no problem; there were plenty of short lengths of metal around in the ship debris. But wheels were few and far between. You'd think a ship might be full of this basic tenet of civilization, but most mechanical parts now used puffs of air, rather than levers or wheels or gears. I finally had to fashion them myself. I didn't have the skill to fashion spoked wheels. Instead, I used two circular rounds of metal, pounded outward on each side in a flange to serve as the wheel, joined together so there was a web of wheel on each side, and using a bit of pneumatic piping to join the two wheels together. For this was a two wheeled cart, not a wagon. I started to use the laser awl to punch holes and rivet the strips together, but soon discovered a sharp piece of metal worked just as well and saved the power. I used all the metal wire I could find to join the axel to the cart bed, and the wheels to the axel. Another length of pneumatic pipe, heated and bent in a loop on both ends, served to form as a handle on one end, giving me a loop to pull with, and connected the handle to the axel on the other.

The end result was extremely ugly and ungainly. The _Surak_ it was not. Nor could it take a great weight – which was no problem as I couldn't have pulled a great weight anyway.

But it rolled and I was thrilled with it. No longer did I have to carry things in my arms or on my back. I could pile it with wood or food and not have to make trip after trip to handle loads bigger than I could carry.

And I had made it all myself.

I test pulled my little cart back and forth, and was excited enough to interrupt the master at his work, to show it off.

"Look at this!" I pronounced as I picked my way through the crash site, tugging the ungainly vehicle behind me. It struggled a bit on the uneven ground, but it moved. "I have discovered the wheel!" I stopped before his work shed. "Well, rediscovered it, anyway," I modestly amended.

Sarek turned from his work and his eyes narrowed incredulously. He rose up and came to the front of his shelter, presumably to get a better look at it. Then he looked at me as if to verify that it wasn't some figment of his imagination. And then…

His mouth twitched, ever so slightly. He caught it, instantly, and grew as if stern, surveying the contraption before him, brow furrowed in contemplation.

I took a look at it with new eyes, and realized that it was rather more pathetic than I thought. Though still dear to my heart.

But for Sarek it was too much. The corners of his mouth twitched again, and he turned a little away.

"You're laughing at me!" I said, wounded to the quick. "At my wonderful cart!"

He drew himself up into Vulcan dignity. "I am not," he said loftily. But then, eyes rolling over my contraption, he pulled in the corners of his mouth again into strict Vulcan lines as if they were failing him, and straightened his shoulders a little, as if against an incipient shaking.

"You are! You beast!" I dropped the cart handle and gave him a clout with both hands, which he was too busy trying to keep his countenance to arrest. "You ought to be--- you **should** be worshipping it as the technological marvel it is! Behold your new idol, the wheel!" I trundled it back and forth before him, while he shook his head, human style at the absurdity.

"Weep, as Caesar did, when he beheld the glories of Egypt!" I was laughing myself and offended it at the same time. True, my husband had a privileged background, surrounded by the best and most technological equipment. I suppose he'd been distracted enough by his own advanced electronic work that my appearance with my little knocked together cart struck him as absurd. But I still took umbrage at his continued reaction of incredulity. He hadn't yet stopped the Vulcan equivalent of laughing. At the very least, it was very unsupportive of his hard-working wife. Not to mention rather ignoring the reality of our situation. "Sarek!"

His shoulders were shaking, just a bit, and though his face was still stern, the corners of his mouth were definitely twitching. He shook his head again, human style. "That is the most pathetic contrivance --"

"Pathetic? It's beautiful!"

He covered his eyes with one hand, ostensibly to rub his brow or perhaps push his trailing bangs out of his eyes, but I suspected as a cover to give him a moment to regain his countenance. He took a measured breath, and with control reestablished, looked up. And closed his eyes again, and his shoulders twitched. Setting his face with ruthless Vulcan control, he finally recovered enough to say, "Beautiful?"

"Well….practical anyway."

Finally becoming serious, he flicked a brow of acknowledgement. But he still shook his head at it.

"Look, it may not be a Vulcan 'lematya class' corvette, with a high speed warp sled," I said, annoyed. "But it's here, and the _Surek_ is not. At least, not yet. And it can haul wood." I grabbed a couple of loose branches and a few pieces of debris for demonstration purposes and trundling it along, proved it.

"So it can," he said, finally interested. He stepped forward, his levity now arrested by Vulcan curiosity. "How did you manage the axel?"

"Ummm," I stepped quickly in front of my contraption, defensive, suddenly unwilling for it to face technical Vulcan criticism. "Well, there you have me. It's got what you might call a fixed axel – like the old Roman carts. But they still managed to conquer most of Europe! And think what straight roads they created, to accommodate them."

Sarek gave me a glance that told me that the necessarily straight old Roman roads of long distant Terra were of no pertinent relevance here. Soon he had my bogus load tossed out and the cart up-ended. "Where are your tools?" he asked, sitting down with a typical Vulcan problem-solving look on his face, his fingers itching to get into it.

"I didn't come here for you to -- Listen, it's **my** cart."

"I wouldn't dream of appropriating your creation. I am just going to make it better for its task. Go and get them."

I made a face but brought them, and proceeded to watch, as anxiously as if he were doing surgery on my baby, as he proceeded to undo much of what I'd done underneath the cart and refit the underside with a more flexible axel that would turn and gave it sturdier fastenings and underpinnings. At least, he didn't waste anything I'd contrived. With his greater strength, he could also pound the wheels into something that more resembled circles, and reinforced them too. I've never been that great at free form drawing, and my wheels had not been noted for strict hemispherical roundness. I had to admit, when he was done, the cart pulled much easier.

"It was still my idea," I said, giving his improvements a slightly jaundiced eye as I gave the newly remodeled vehicle a test drive.

"And a very useful one, as you say."

"With it, I can gather all our wood myself. So you can work full-time on your transmitter."

He looked up at me, from where he'd been sitting on the ground surveying the motion of the new axel as I pulled it, suddenly grave. "Is that why you built it?"

"Not entirely, but it seems like the logical solution. Why should you waste your time on gathering firewood?" I asked. "Manual labor, I can do. Building complex electronics, I can't. The faster you get it built, perhaps the faster we'll get out of here."

He was quiet, considering that. "Very well," he finally said reluctantly. "As you wish. I will leave all provisioning to you then, and concentrate full time on the transmitter. Unless you request assistance."

"I won't," I said, suddenly serious.

He gave me a long look. Then he reached out, took the fingers of my hand, rough and calloused and more than a little dirty with my morning's work, and… brought them to his lips.

It was a rare gesture, and a very pretty one. It wasn't emotional. His manner was grave and quiet. It wasn't even necessarily an unVulcan touch, between bondmates, in private. But it could still surprise and overwhelm me when he reacted in a way, however Vulcan, that was almost human, and that touched me in an emotional human way. I closed my eyes and had to fight to keep my countenance, in this case not from laughter. "We've both got things to do," I said, my voice choked.

"Amanda?"

"I forgive you for laughing at my cart," I said, as if the last moment had never happened. One thing Vulcans failed to consider, is that however much humans value emotion, sometimes it is too much even for us. And before I betrayed myself, I pulled my hand and my cart away.

I waited until I was out of sight before I scrubbed, ineffectually, at my eyes with my dirty hands.

I could have washed my hands in a stream. But after all, they'd only get dirty again with the next branch I picked up.

And I had work to do.

Now that I had the cart, I could go further afield. And I needed to. This area had a slightly different micro-climate that was proving very frustrating for me. I found less berries, for one. There was a bit more grain, but as in our former location, so much of it had fallen over and gotten moldy in the rain. I fashioned a scythe of a piece of metal scrap, and cut all the grain grass I could, to bring it back to camp and strip in the evenings. But it never amounted to many handfuls, for all that labor. Honey and nuts I still found, and the nuts were beginning to be ripe. But the stands of nut bushes were never in a group together. I traveled long distances to get to all these different types of food.

Have I mentioned I was not unknown for getting lost in the seemingly unending stone corridors of the Fortress?

I did my best to forge a trail, both for the cart's maneuverability and for me. It was faster traveling along a well broken route. I also did my best to mark trees, and set up small piles of stone pyramids and otherwise point the way I'd come, and the way home.

But it was so tedious to traverse back to camp along the same ground I had come across the first time. It didn't help to find new food either, to trace back along my old route.

I wanted to have a series of circles when I traveled. And so every day I tried to go a little further, to circle around to camp, marking my trail as I went. I watched the sun, to figure out how long it took to walk. When I didn't seem to make it back to camp in the circle I'd chosen, I tried on alternate days, coming from the other direction, hoping to meet up with the other side of my attempted trail.

It wasn't as easy as it should have been. Surely two halves of a circular trail ought to meet somewhere… But I couldn't seem to manage it.

It was so frustrating; I was determined to do it.

One day, I'd pushed through a few more hundred yards on the outbound side, certain I'd recognized where I had come from the other direction before, positive I had picked up my trail on the other side. I walked, and walked, occasionally going a little afield to glean something. Then I began to be uncertain that I had found it. Everything looked familiar and unfamiliar. I didn't see any of my piles of stones or other trail markings. Trees, after all, look a lot alike. But I felt like I certainly should be coming to it soon, so I pushed on. And pushed on. And pushed on. My feet were aching, my shoulders too, from the drag of the cart. I hurried now, eager to have the comfort of knowing where I was, and pushed on even faster. And still there was no trail sign or confirmation that I had stumbled back on the other half of my trail.

I couldn't believe it. I had timed and measured how far I was coming from each side. Surely if the laws of physics held true, I ought to come across my other trail.

And yet I didn't.

I looked back at the woods, through the low hanging trees, and thought about retracing my steps back where I had come. But I had walked so far. I was positive that the shorter walk back to camp would be connecting up with the far side trail on other side rather then going back all the way I had come. I was determined not to keep retracing my steps and back tracking every day. So, I pushed on.

And still I saw nothing familiar.

Now the afternoon was advancing. The sun was lowering. I had gone too far to get back the other way. I'd never make it back before sunset if I did that. In the dark I wouldn't be able to find my signs on trees and piles of stones. I'd be hopelessly lost.

Suddenly the way back looked as blank and confusing as the way forward.

And the sun sank a little more.

And I realized I was deep in the woods, hours and hours from camp. And in a very few minutes, it would be dark.

I swallowed hard and kept going. "Lions and tigers and bears, Oh my," I muttered. I was starting to feel that way. But when in doubt, forge ahead.

I came to a largish hill I thought looked familiar and I went up it, pulling the cart that seemed heavier with every step, sure that when I came to the other side I'd know where I was. But at the summit, the ground dropped abruptly, down to a big stream I had never seen before. None of this looked familiar, and I grew panicked again. I stood on the top of the treeline and peered through the deepening gloom of the trees as the sun slanted. Surely I ought to be able to see the clearing. I'd come so far. It ought to be just ahead.

But I saw nothing but more and more and more trees.

I looked back and the way back seemed more daunting than the way forward. And the way forward was no way at all.

I was lost.

"How can I be lost on this stupid planet, only a few miles from camp," I said.

I sat down for a moment, not just because I was tired enough that I almost couldn't go on, but to regroup. To stave off panic that kept threatening me.

The sun dipped a little more, and in this dark, moonless planet, there was hardly any light left at all.

And I did panic.

I cursed my fate under my breath. Then I yelled Sarek's name, even though I was probably far outside his hearing. Non-telepath that I was, I tugged hard on the bond, as if I were pulling back on the bridle of a runaway horse. I couldn't feel anything in return. Not a single thing.

"Stupid bond. Where is it when you need it?" I muttered.

I had no choice. I walked on. And then I thought to whistle. I put my fingers in my mouth and let the whistle shriek out as loud as I possibly could.

I felt better about it, being able to whistle. I was a terrible whistler, and never did it. I wasn't even sure if I had ever whistled in Sarek's presence before. But Sarek, if he could hear me, would know no animal on this planet had so far sounded like that. He'd recognize that sound as me and nothing else. Or at best I was counting on Vulcan curiosity to come looking to see what it was.

Though since there was no guarantee he could hear me, as tired and miserable as I was, I kept walking. Every ten minutes, I gave a put my fingers in my mouth and gave another piercing whistle.

Never had our little camp seemed more desirable. I'd almost take it, now, over the _Surek_. Just to be home, as camp now seemed to me.

Now I could hardly see the ground under my feet. Doubts crept in on me. Perhaps I was heading away from the camp, not round to it. Perhaps, like the cart wheels themselves, I had not made my circle round enough. Perhaps, perhaps. I put my fingers in my mouth again and drew a deep breath, preparing for another whistle. And a voice came out of the dark, practically in my ear.

"Must you make that ear shattering noise again?"

I nearly jumped out of my skin. "Sarek!"

"What are you doing here?"

I spent a few minutes calming my racing heart and catching my breath. "I ask myself that. Constantly."

"I mean here." Sarek took the handle of the cart and turned in a direction perpendicular to where I had been heading. I fell into step beside him.

"Do you always walk like a vampire, silent in the night?"

"Would you prefer I blundered around, crashing through leaves and cracking tree branches and making a noise like a trumpeting elephant?"

"An elephant?!" I said, offended.

"Forgive me, perhaps it was the cart that was making all that noise," Sarek said. "But the shrieking whistling certainly was you. And you haven't answered my question. Why are you here?"

"I was trying to get back to camp."

"You were **trying**… But Amanda, you were heading away from our camp. You are, in fact two miles past it. And were heading further away."

"I was afraid of that," I admitted ruefully. "You'd never believe that I really did get an A in geometry at school."

"You didn't know where you were." Sarek said it as if he suddenly realized it. He stopped and turned, staring at me. "You didn't know where you were going?"

"Does that surprise you? How many times have I gotten lost in the Fortress alone?"

He drew a huge breath. "I didn't think--" he turned to me again, "You should have said something."

"I was doing well enough!" I defended. "I marked my path. I made some trails."

"You made some trails," he said as if stunned. "Trails. It was these trails that you were following, when you were heading away from camp into oblivion?"

"No, of course not. I got lost. Don't look at me as if I'm the village idiot!"

His eyes narrowed at that criticism. "At least if you were, it would imply there **was** a village and there would be that much less possibility of getting lost. Or of being found if you were. You went in these woods without knowing where you were going?"

I lost my own temper in turn. "Have you forgotten again that I am **not like you**?! I don't have a compass built into my head that tells me where I'm going. I just have to wing it."

"To wing it," he said, as if appalled.

"So I got lost. I called you. You found me." I turned away and pushed past to walk ahead of him, indicating I was done with the subject. "What is the big deal?"

Sarek wasn't ready to let it go. "No more," he said darkly.

I paused and looked at him over my shoulder. "Don't. Don't over-react."

He gave me a look at my accusing him of that. "We will discuss this tomorrow."

"Sarek!" I warned.

"Tomorrow," he said curtly.

I drew breath to argue then I saw something, in the set of his shoulders, the look in his eyes that made me subside. Tackling a Vulcan with his ire raised was not a very smart thing for any mere human to do. Best to wait until we both had calmed down.

It took us an hour before we got back to camp. He must have run all the way to find me, but of course, with the wagon, we couldn't do that going back. It was good I had Sarek with me. By that time it was so dark that I could hardly see my hand in front of my face.

Sarek didn't say a word the rest of the way back. A few times he took my hand or arm when I stumbled in the dark. But then let go of me as quickly as if he'd been burned. I took that to mean he had still yet to gather his own control.

No camp had ever looked as good as our little cluster of rude panels and possessions.

Sarek had left some hot water with berries over some dwindling coals. In the time we'd been gone, the liquid had boiled down. Sitting by the fire was the cup he had set down when he must have heard my first whistle, still half full.

I added more water to the juice, built up the fire, and took a cup of the drink for myself. I was terribly thirsty. Across from me Sarek went to the emergency food supplies, opened a packet, and set it in front of me.

"Aren't you?--"

"I am not hungry," he said shortly, and stalked off into the night.

"Well!" I said, frustrated and beginning to be angry all over again. But my feet hurt too much to go after him.

I fell asleep before he got back and was out like a light all night. In the morning, I slept a bit later than usual. And when I woke, Sarek was already up, getting a drink from the fire. There was a sharp, acrid burning smell in the air, and when I looked, I saw that one of our pots had a mess of berries in it, and they'd boiled down so far they were inedible. I bit my tongue over that waste.

When Sarek saw I was awake, he brought a drink for me too. And something else he handed over with the drink, something small, and round.

"Here."

I am not always my best in the morning. I focused on it laboriously. "What--"

"It is a compass for your eyes. Since as you say, you don't have one in your head."

"Oh." I looked down at it, blinking.

"Today, I'll go with you, and teach you how to use it."

I flushed, irritated. "I can use a compass." Actually, I wasn't entirely certain that I could, but I felt sure I could learn on my own.

"And I will mark your trails. Properly."

I stared at him and then shrugged. It could have been worse. At least he wasn't going all SuperVulcan on me and insisting it wasn't safe to let me stir out of camp at all. "All right. Thank you." We breakfasted in a rather self conscious silence. "What about your work?" I asked, as Sarek took the handle of my cart, and put the pot with the burned berry juice in it.

"It can wait a day," he said, still a bit darkly. "There's hardly much point to being rescued, if I end up losing my wife and going back alone to an even worse fate."

I didn't quite like the sound of that but I let it pass. "Why are you bringing that pot? We don't need to dump it far from camp. It doesn't smell that bad."

"I don't intend to dump it. It is dye, to mark your trails."

"Oh."

Sarek also took the ax, a long pole and one of our precious rags, presumably also for trail marking.

And when he marked trails, he really marked trails. Huge gashes, stripping the bark away from trees, high up so even at a distance the signs were visible. Leaving part of the peeled bark a stark white, and other painted a deep red from the juice, that was easily visible through the green leaves of trees whether the sun was high or low. He chose trees for markers that stood a little apart, so that his markings were harder to miss even when I was off the path. And not just a V trail marker indicating the shortest distance back to camp, but with symbols for time, distance in kilometers and direction from our campsite. With different symbols for the main "alpha" trail loop, for a shortcut beta trail. For an even shorter gamma loop. He hooked up with my main trail on the other side of the alpha loop, the one I had searched for so fruitlessly yesterday, as easily as if it had been the yellow brick road to Oz with the Tin Man and the Scarecrow there to point the way. (Cowardly or not, in deference to my husband's Vulcan prejudice against cats, I am leaving the Lion out.)

"How do you **do** that?" I asked, frustrated as he strolled along as comfortably as if we were in our own garden on Vulcan. "Why can't **I** do that?"

"How can you not?" he answered, equally puzzled. "How can a people as vastly traveled as humans have never developed a directional sense?"

"I'll take it up with the complaint department the next time I'm up there at the pearly gates."

He gave me a glance. "Not anytime soon, I trust," he answered. And then took my hand.

It was apology, of sorts, for his temper yesterday. I had to smile at the non-verbal message. I squeezed his hand briefly, to let him know the apology was accepted. And then let it go.

He also showed me, for when I had to go off the marked trails for food or fuel or water, how to use the compass to get back to them.

It was actually a pretty nice day, all in all. We stopped for lunch at mid-day. And as we sat by the side of a stream, and had some fruit and drank some water, I saw something waving in the stream that stirred a memory.

"That looks almost like cress." I stripped off my shoes, and waded into the water, wincing at its coldness, avoiding Sarek's abortive grasp.

"Must you?" he asked uneasily.

"Do you want me to see if this is edible or not?"

"I want you to stay on dry land. Why is it that humans continually wish to immerse themselves--?"

"Oh, hush." I gathered a few handfuls and brought it out, shaking off the water and tasting it tentatively.

"Don't **do** that. It isn't safe. Let me--"

"It **does** taste like cress. I knew I was right. Try it."

He tasted it delicately and then raised a judicious brow. "Yes. It has some excellent nutritive qualities."

I went back in and gathered the rest of the small patch, while Sarek rather looked as if he hadn't thought of that repercussion, and wished he had said it wasn't edible.

"I wouldn't have minded something more substantial than the equivalent of lettuce," I said, coming back out, "but still, it will be a change. This will be nice for dinner, with some toasted nuts, don't you think?"

"Yes," Sarek resigned himself to the inevitable. "Just be careful going in after it. I am not adept at water rescues."

I lay back. "I'll keep that in mind. So I found another food source. See? You brought us luck today."

"Luck," Sarek said, as if it were a ridiculous statement, which to a Vulcan, I suppose it was.

"Don't be tiresome," I yawned, still tired from the death march of the previous day. "Life is not all logic, you know."

"I only meant that of all things I might have brought you to, this is hardly a fortuitous circumstance."

I gave him a glance. "Feeling contrite?"

He didn't rise to the bait. "You know me better."

"Indeed I do," I said with meaning. "It hasn't been all bad. Like now, for example. I almost wish you didn't have to go back and build that transmitter."

"What is that odd human saying?" Sarek responded, thinking through the catalog in his mind of all the odd human sayings I'd said over the years. "Bite your tongue," he finally came out with.

"I don't really mean it that way," I said. "I want to be rescued – as soon as possible. Just that it's nice, to spend some time with you this way."

"You could have, on Vulcan. And you never have."

I bit my lip, suddenly sad, wondering if we'd ever see Vulcan again. I wondered at the even tone in his last statement, and wondered what it was hiding. Was he disappointed I didn't go out on the desert with him? "You know the Forge is not my element. I wouldn't want to be in your way."

He gave me a look. "How can you possibly be in my way? You're my wife."

It was one of those moments when your emotions hit you like a punch in the stomach. I didn't want to tell Sarek how inhuman his attitude was. In a moment of closeness, you don't want to throw up a cultural wall. I didn't want to get all emotional either, because that would be a cultural wall of a different kind. But it was a gift he had given me.

I gathered myself and gave him a smile, turning my flutterings of emotion into the light teasing that had become accepted in our marriage. Human or Vulcan, we both had a sense of humor. And something more together than just humor. "Prove it."

He gave the ground a disdainful look, not misunderstanding me. "On Vulcan, it would be warm sand. These rocks and branches--"

"I'll help you clear them away. I'm useful that way."

He gave me a long level look. I knew that behind it, his supercomputer brain was calculating a number of things, air temperature, humidity (how cold that ground really would be), how much work he had to do, how improper taking time off from such work for such doings was to his Vulcan values. His own inclinations. And mine. The tenor of the day. And perhaps a general awareness that after yesterday's cross words, we both had a few things to make up.

"You're useful in many ways," he finally said.

"Such sweet nothings," I teased in earnest. "Be still my heart."

"Not for long," Sarek warned.

He was right, of course. There's nothing like a Vulcan husband intent on an amorous encounter to get one's heart racing.

Afterwards, long before my heart had settled back down from racing, he shouldered his hatchet and paint pot and his other trail marking tools and sauntered back to his own work, leaving me with the wagon and a bundle of cress and a heart that needed a good ten minutes to recover. I watched him taking a slanting short cut, far off the trail, back to camp, sure of where he was going. Back home, at least for now.

It was a nice thought. It was becoming home.

I picked up the handle of my little cart, that in my mind I'd christened the _Surak_, and wondered if I'd ever see him sauntering off to the Forge again. And if someday, I'd go with him.

And then I put that thought away. Best not to think about that future. And I had food to gather. And fuel to get.

And the sun was already looking a little lower in the sky.

_To be continued…_


	9. Chapter 9

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 9**

That high, from the downed cruiser, lasted us for only a little while. Sarek worked diligently at his transmitter. He could not promise success, since he couldn't test the components until it was built, but he was hopeful. It seemed to me a slow process, but I said nothing about how long it took.

I had gotten quite good at finding what food there was. That I came back with less and less of it each day wasn't my fault. And like my not saying anything to Sarek about the slowness and setbacks in his transmitter work, he didn't complain about my food gathering skills. He accepted what I brought back, and said no more.

I might have welcomed it if he had, because it would have opened a conversation that was increasingly worrying me. But busy as he was, it was one I hated to burden him with.

The simple fact was that, like Terra, this planet had a little tiny tilt. Just enough to give it seasons.

Summer was ending. Winter was coming.

I tried as best I could. To ration the food packets in the crash, and use them only as a supplement. But there were days when I had to use them. Even though I grew increasingly bolder about getting food.

Where as before I was reasonably cautious of getting caught in a bee swarm, now I was blithe and blustering, surging straight into a honey hive not even always bothering to get a smoking branch. But the day came that I'd raided all the hives I could find. And I was seeing few bees.

It used to be that I could sit in a flower patch, and then follow the bees back to their hive. Now that the flowers were gone, I could hardly find bees. Unless I stumbled across a nest of the near dormant bees, honey was becoming a scarce commodity. I did the best I could. Now I scouted for locations where flowers would have been, and then looked around the area for dormant hives. I found quite a few nests that way, enough that I don't think Sarek realized how rare the honey I was finding had become.

Vulcans caught up in a problem can become almost blind and deaf to anything else. And I wanted him to be blind, if that's what it took. And perhaps, being Vulcan, he was doubly oblivious to what the seasonal change would mean to us. Vulcan has seasons, of course, but winter is a major growing season on Vulcan, much more than summer.

But on this world, in this location, I knew it would be different.

As I was walking one day, a leaf fell at my feet, and I knew what that meant. Autumn was soon to be here, and if leaves were falling from trees, it meant that it would be cold and that the growing season was effectively over. It made me even less willing to burden Sarek with my problems. His transmitter work became increasingly important to me as I realized that flowers, bees and honey were going to vanish for us, just like the bramble berries already had.

On the surface, what I was doing might have seemed ideal. The end of summer was not that apparent, unless you could read the signs or were searching for things that became scarce at the season's change. Here I was, walking through meadows and forests, gathering honey, fruits and nuts, grains of seeds, and watercress for salads. But sometimes I'd stop and listen. And think of what was to come. Behind the hum of insects seemed to me a rising wind, sighing from the death of all the human life on the planet. Or most of it. And the planet itself, rocking back from the insults war had brought to it. The skies were silent. They were too silent. But I still didn't quite understand what that meant.

One day, I was reaching for some fruit, and a bird's nest fell at my feet. And out of it two eggs.

I grabbed reflexively for the eggs, not thinking of them so much as food, but as future birds. I caught them before they broke. But the eggs were cool. There was no bird around to incubate them. And so after thinking for a bit, I put the eggs, nest and all, into my cart.

That evening, remembering something from a long ago taken science class, I candled the eggs before the fire, looking through the nearly transparent shell to the contents inside. They were unfertilized. Useless as future birds. But valuable, perhaps, to us.

I broke them, mixed them in a bowl with ground grain, ground nuts, and some chopped and mushed up fruit and baked the result on a flat stone over the fire. The 'bread' left a lot to be desired as a gourmet treat, but I thought it tasted fabulous. I made another loaf for Sarek, using just the mushed up fruit as a binding agent, and it was not nearly as successful. When Sarek came back that evening, I told him what I'd done, and that he didn't have to eat the one with the eggs, but I couldn't see the logic not to use them, at least for me.

"They're really just like seeds, Sarek. There's no sense in letting them go to waste, when we need them."

He looked at the eggshells I'd left by the fire – lately I'd been saving everything and I'd thought perhaps I might put the shells in the bread, too, for the calcium, but at the last moment had relented, thinking it would probably be bad enough without shards of shells.

"As you say, it isn't logical to waste them," he said.

I let out a sigh of relief.

He ate the bread too. Not just the half of the one I'd made for both of us, but the less successful one I'd made that only had fruit as a binder. Ate them both without comment, or any sign that one food was more or less palatable than the other. I was glad of that, at the time. Glad to be able to add one more food source to our dwindling list. I didn't really think about whether it meant more than it did, to him.

Now that I had Sarek's okay, I spent a lot of time looking for nests and eggs, and found quite a few. Not all the eggs were good. Many of them were disappointingly rotten, but eggs keep a long time, and many were useful. For a while I made fruit and nut bread every evening. It was one way to stretch our sparse food supplies. We never had much grain, not enough to make a full meal of by itself, but a few handfuls of grain flour, mixed with nuts and nut flour, fruit, and as many eggs as I could find, made a filling meal out of bits and pieces. I grew greedy looking for eggs – I was quite starving for real protein – and spent as much time with my eyes looking skyward, peering for nests as I did looking on the ground for nuts or grain. I was reckless enough – Sarek would probably have been furious -- to climb small trees to get to a likely nest, and fashioned a sling to carry the nest and eggs back down. I usually took the nest, just to help keep the eggs from breaking. And the nesting season was long over anyway.

It was when I was half in, half out of a tree, sliding a nest into my sling – three eggs this time, and I could already taste them for dinner – that I was badly surprised by a voice below me. I'd been so caught up in climbing the tricky tree that I hadn't heard anyone approach.

"Well, look what I found," the voice said.

I was so shocked my foot slipped on a branch that wasn't as sturdy as I thought it had been. I slipped off the branch, and slid all the way to the ground, letting out a yelp as I landed on my back with a thump that then knocked the breath out of me. Even then my one thought was that the eggs were safe.

I opened my eyes to find a wickedly long knife at my throat.

"Not a word," the man said. He spoke the lingua franca of the colonies, which after months of negotiations I understood and spoke well enough. Then he half laughed, and pulled back the knife. "Though I guess there's no one around to hear if you screamed your head off, is there? Just the two of us, right?"

"Wrong," I eyed the knife that was still too close to risk anything but a killing blow. "There's any number of people around here, and they don't take kindly to strangers wielding knives."

"There's no one, girlie. Not that I've seen, and I've been around."

"Well, you didn't see me until just now, did you?"

He laughed at that. "True enough. But I see you now." His grip tightened and pulled me against him, the knife before my eyes, threatening. I put out my free arm to protect the eggs.

"Watch it," I said. "That's my dinner."

He looked down at the eggs, and his eyes traveled over to my cart. "Look at you. You've got wood and provisions. You must have a little camp here, roundabouts?"

"And there's no room at the inn."

"Oh, there's always room for just one more. And you're going to make sure of that."

"No. She's not," came a familiar voice behind us.

I blessed Vulcan hearing. He must have heard me yelp, and come running to see if I was injured.

The man reared back to take in this threat, but then his posture relaxed, though the knife at my throat never wavered. "You're one of those Vulcans. Maybe **that** Vulcan. Pacifist," he spat, as if it was an epithet.

"Let her go," Sarek said, so evenly I knew that if he'd been speaking to anyone on Vulcan they would have stumbled over themselves to do his bidding. That tone, in a Vulcan, spelled trouble.

"Why should I give her to you?" he bluffed. "She looks like a pretty good provider. Anyway, you wouldn't know what to do with her, would you? A woman like this."

Fire flashed in Sarek's eyes at that. "I advise you to let her go," he warned, his voice still the deadly calm that in negotiations warned of dire consequences. He took a step toward us.

"Oh, I get it. Found her first, did you? And thinking to keep her all for yourself, too? Uh–uh, Vulcan. A human belongs to a human," he said, and pushing me into the arm holding the knife, reached for the blaster he wore on one hip. "Though, maybe I ought to keep both of you, at that. No need for **me** to work, the setup you've got here. Provided you behave, pacifist." The knife still at my throat, his eyes on Sarek, he shifted and fumbled for the blaster, and his grip on me loosening slightly as he tried to hold both weapons and me.

It was all the invitation I needed. I slammed my foot on his instep, and even through the supernova of pain that followed, managed to knee him in the groin. Though I cried out probably more in pain than he did – I'd just ruined weeks of tentative bone knitting. But he seemed pretty devastated too. Hopping and groaning from the double assault, the man let me go. I grabbed the blaster away from him and then my foot gave out under me and I fell, having at least enough possession of my faculties to roll out of the way, because I saw Sarek launching for him.

From the ground I saw Sarek knock aside the man's clumsy knife thrust and reach for a neck pinch.

I crawled over to pick up the knife and struggled to my feet, a weapon in each hand. "Sarek, I have it, I have it!" I said. Meaning I had the gun, which I was still cradling in my hand. But I don't think Sarek heard me. Whether it was my cry of pain, that he thought the man had hurt me, or a slip of his hand, or just an accident, or some long-buried and reawakened instinct, he'd flown at my attacker with the unchecked merciless strength of an adult Vulcan male. No human could match or challenge it. And he didn't need any clumsy weapons.

The neck pinch should only have dropped my attacker, harmlessly. But perhaps, in the tussle, Sarek's grip shifted. The crack of the man's breaking neck was very loud in the sudden silence. And then the human lay dead at our feet.

Sarek stood there, panting, hands dropped to his sides, eyes half closed.

"I had it," I whispered, still holding the now superfluous blaster. Though, like the weapon, the point was moot, now.

Sarek looked at me, and his eyes fell on the weapons in my hand. "You--"

"It's all right," I said quickly, struggling to limp forward on my one good foot. "It wasn't your fault. It was an accident."

Sarek came back to himself and looked down at the dead man. "He might have told us something."

"He told me more than I wanted to hear," I said, half tempted to give the repulsive body a kick. "And I don't think he could have been trusted," I said. "If you hadn't killed him, I might have had to. At least you spared me that."

Sarek looked at me, and then after a long moment, nodded.

This body we buried, though we didn't have a shovel. We took him into the woods, well off any trail I might traverse, to a rocky area by a defunct stream and covered him with rocks. While Sarek was hauling rocks, I searched the man's pockets. But there was nothing except the blaster and the knife, except the knife sheath strapped to a leather belt. I took the belt and the sheath. I left the clothes. I felt certain Sarek would refuse to wear them. And somehow I couldn't bear it either. Emotional as the distaste was, and as logical as it would have been, neither one of us suggested it.

Sarek spent the next day scouting, worried that this man was just one of perhaps a horde of uncivilized renegades, but he found nothing and no one. Never-the-less, I kept the blaster with me. It didn't have much of a charge on the indicator, but I figured I could get one shot off. And one would be all I needed. Years ago, when I had been threatened by some lunatic fringe pro human anti-alien hate group, I had taken a firearms class, and I was quite a good shot. Of course weapons today were so good they practically aimed themselves. Never-the-less, I knew how to use one, and I had none of my husband's qualms against it.

Sarek was restless and upset enough to check on me, several times a day at first. But then, at last he put it behind him, and let me stay out alone as before.

Soon, except for carrying the blaster, I forgot the incident. I had other worries. Just when I'd gotten Sarek to accept the idea of birds' eggs as food, eggs were becoming impossible to find. My foot hurt worse than ever, but I strapped it up and ignored it. When you are hungry, nothing else seems to matter much. I grew reckless climbing branches to far too high nests. I went out further into the woods, widening my circle, but I was only partially successful in finding more eggs, or much other food, for that matter. And I knew that would be all the eggs, till spring came. The nesting season was over.

The berries were now completely gone too, as vanished if they'd never been, when weeks before they'd hung thick on every brambling branch.

There were some new berries that were akin to wild grapes, but they had so little fruit and so much pit, it was almost useless to try to eat them. We couldn't eat the pits because Sarek, with his keener taste, detected a trace of a poison in the pits, again like the arsenic that could be found in certain Terran fruit pits. But the fruit, sparse as it was, was edible. And pickings were scarce enough that I spent hours gathering and pitting them, even for what little food they afforded. Simmered, with some of the mealy fruit, they made a good flavoring for water, at least.

Some new crops did take their place. The nuts in their papery shell now were all ripe, not just scant patches here and there. I lugged then by the thousands back to our camp. I shelled and stored all I could carry. They weren't large, but they were food and we ate them every possible way, raw, toasted, and smashed up and added to the weedy grain that I ground and made into bread. Now that we had virtually no eggs, I made the bread with only fruit for a binding agent and with more nut flour than grain flour since I could hardly find any more grain. The result, baked on a flat rock over a fire, yielded a truly awful bread. But it was filling.

But then the days came when the grain was virtually gone. And the nuts were going. Day after day I came back from gleaning with less food. Fear that had been lurking at the back of my mind became real, however I tried to stave it off. I couldn't ignore it, or rationalize it any longer.

I didn't try to talk to Sarek. He was making real progress, and so engrossed in his electronics he barely had two words to say to me. He worked non stop as long as he had light to do so, and tried to do some of the less tricky technical work by firelight. I didn't want to bother him because it was obvious to me that he needed to finish as soon as he could, so that we could move on. We couldn't stay here.

With natural food becoming so scarce, I supplemented my scanty gleanings with the food packages from the crash in the expectation that before they ran out, Sarek would have made his device and that either rescue would be at hand or we could at least move camp. I don't know if Sarek really believed that his device would work. Or that even if it did, a rescue would be soon coming. I was beginning to believe it less and less. No one had come yet, had they? But we still went on, with that expectation. After all, what else could we do?

We went through two very hungry weeks. Sarek never complained that I had so little food to offer him. He no doubt knew what I was going through. We'd gone through almost all our emergency food, and I was just trying to hold on, till he was done.

The day he turned on the transmitter was a day of celebration. Or at least, I tried to make it so. Sarek connected the last electronic synapse as I watched. And watched. I didn't know what I expected after all his painstaking, laborious work. There was nothing. Not a hum, not a light, nothing.

"Sarek," I said confused. "What…?" I didn't know what to expect, but there was no obvious indicator that it was working. The device when on looked no different on than it did off.

He crouched by it, looking over the equipment.

"Is it sending out a signal?" I asked doubtfully.

"I hope so."

I was astonished at this. "Don't you know?"

"I have no spare electronics to fashion an equivalent receiver." He rose wearily. "If all the components are functional, and so far as I have been able to check they are, it …should…work." He looked down at it as if willing it to be so.

I looked at the equipment too. There was nothing to indicate it was doing anything at all. "There's not even a blinking light," I ventured.

"Lights cost power," Sarek with a trace of impatience at what perhaps to him, seemed obvious.

I swallowed hard and backed off from any implied criticism. "Are you going to just run it for a few hours a day… or something? To make it last longer?"

He shook his head, human style. "No. Powering it up repeatedly will use almost as much energy as letting it run." He turned away. "Now that I have this done, I'll go back to the crash site, and see if I can glean something for a renewable power source. A generator. Solar, or wind. Eventually--"

"Not now," I said, catching his arm. "This is a special night. And I've planned a dinner in celebration. Let's eat."

I'd worked hard on this dinner, saved up through hungry weeks for it. A couple of handfuls of precious grain and a hoarded egg for my horrendous nut bread. Our last two food packets. A hot drink of water mixed with a couple of spoonfuls of precious honey and painstakingly crushed and pitted wild grapes. It was better than we'd eaten in the last ten-day, but Sarek ate methodically, as if he didn't taste anything, not meeting my eyes.

"Don't you like it?" I asked, a little disturbed that our celebration was falling so flat.

"Yes, of course." He said, finishing the last of his food with the same methodical control and no enjoyment at all. His eyes didn't meet mine as he put the prefab meal's container into the fire. . I wondered if he was upset at my implied criticism of his efforts, or if it was something else.

Hungry as I was, I couldn't eat much. My stomach had shrunk after the near starvation rations we'd been on. And my own appetite had fled with his mood. I added a chunk of my unfinished bread to the remainder of my packaged meal and offered it to him diffidently, not meeting his eyes. "I can't eat this. If you want it--"

He reached out a hand. The wrist exposed by his sleeve as he took it from my hand was so thin I drew a sharp breath. My eyes flew to his, seeing new hollows in his face and temple that I'd been trying to overlook. And I stopped on that indrawn breath at the flicker of something in his eyes that had just briefly been revealed there. Suddenly the reason for his methodical manner, his apparent indifference, his lack of reaction to my celebratory meal became plain.

He was hungry. Sitting cramped over electronics, in the cold damp shelter he had to burn enormous calories just to keep himself warm in this environment, calories he wasn't taking in. He was in a losing battle for survival, just as I was. Starving to death. And he knew it of course, had known it for weeks. Probably with Vulcan blindness he'd expected me to understand this too, to know down to a cellular level the battle he was fighting within himself. Control was all he had. As I handed the food over I could see the tension in his hand, keeping him from snatching it.

No wonder he showed no reaction.

Living day in, day out with a Vulcan, even I only rarely see the predator that five thousand years of civilization and hard won and long practiced controls mask. But I saw it now and I suddenly realized what it had cost Sarek, those weeks and weeks of painstaking work while I stumbled about inexpertly finding food. I had never realized as I prattled and prepared meals and shared them out with him that I was sitting across from a predator who was finding it increasingly difficult to hold onto his civilized manners. Not that he'd ever lose them against a bondmate. My survival was as critical to him as his own. But perhaps that only made the war inside him harder.

He turned partially away from me as he finished my meal. In another life that now seemed more like a dream, back on our civilized terrace, or in our own kitchen, I remember how I used to tease him about his appetite. Sarek had a habit of working through lunch and by dinner time at home he was ravenous enough to wolf down his food --with perfect Vulcan manners – but still barely masking his hunger. And in that previous life, Sarek would sit back as I teased him, a gleam in his eye showing he found it amusing to be teased, so very sure was he of his control and his manners, in spite of his hunger. It was a game we played.

But now he turned away from me, no longer sure, no longer in perfect control. He was getting at most a third, probably more a tenth of those calories now. And had been for weeks, for months. He was hungry. And this was no game.

I finally had to acknowledge it. He was –we were both—starving to death. And doing it in the nicest, most civilized manner. But starving none the less. And if he barely showed it, except for this trace of a lapse, and his vanishing form, he knew it.

And he felt it too. I knew that, even if he couldn't acknowledge it. Felt his control unraveling, every day a little less there, even as he was.

"Oh, Sarek," I whispered.

"I'll get some more water," he said, and rose abruptly. But I knew he meant to meditate, and, somehow, ravel back together his control where it had momentarily frayed.

I sat on the ground, and warmed my hands in front of the fire, one of the few luxuries we didn't have to skimp on. We had a forest full of wood. Thinking about what this meant. And more than a little indignant, both at his attitude and my own.

Because why shouldn't his control fray? Our clothes were barely holding together by threads. Shouldn't our manners suffer a little? I thought we were handling this nightmare pretty well under the circumstances. Didn't we both, even Sarek, have a right to feel the desperation of our circumstances?

But Sarek, I knew would find any lapse inexcusable. Lack of control, even for brief lapses, was a slippery slope which lead to emotion, which led to the kind of Vulcan that his culture had sworn off being five thousand years ago. Even I didn't want to see that.

But what we wanted had very little bearing on our present existence. Perhaps it was a lifetime of privilege that made me keep forgetting that.

_To be continued…_


	10. Chapter 10

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 10**

Sarek rigged up a quasi-renewable energy source for the transmitter. This odd looking thing combined wind turbines, some scavenged solar panels and, at my suggestion, a waterwheel, hooked up to a rudimentary generator. With all three in conjunction, he hoped the transmitter would always have some power feeding to it when the fuel cells ran out. When the water froze, we hoped the wind would blow strongly enough to power it. When the wind was calm, we hoped the sun would shine. At least we knew that it would at least at some times have power to transmit, if the conditions were right. If it was transmitting at all of course. And if help wasn't already on the way.

If, if, if.

Oddly enough, or perhaps not oddly, after all this time waiting for the transmitter to be completed, I was surprised at how little I expected or hoped for from it. Rescue now seemed like a dream to me – or more appropriately, a fairy tale. The life we lived before this also didn't seem quite real. Perhaps it was just that we had just been waiting too long. But mostly, whether we were rescued or not just seemed so irrelevant in the immediate future. It was only the smallest and least important factor in the equation of our daily survival. We couldn't count on it. I'm not sure I even believed in the possibility any more. Somewhere in my mind, after all these months, I had come to expect rescue about in the same light as if God and heaven and the angels, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and the Undersecretary of Federation Colonial Affairs all came down together and plucked us into Nirvana.

I didn't ask Sarek what he believed in.

In the meantime, we had real issues of food and shelter and fuel that determined if we ate and could keep warm. Those were what I lost sleep over, and that plagued me with worry during the day.

It seemed disloyal to admit this to Sarek, but for me, the really important thing about him finishing the transmitter was that it finally left us free so that we could leave this camp.

We barricaded the shelter around Sarek's workshed, to help keep wind driven elements out. Before we closed the door for the final time and mud-packed it in, we put two stone tablets in it, letting whoever found the transmitter know some essential facts about who built it. The date we had left it – I couldn't have said what day it was, but Sarek, with his calculator brain, knew exactly the stardate and time – who we were, and a request to look for us with sensors: a human and a Vulcan together. We wrote the message in charcoal from the fire on one tablet, and in berry juice on the other.

We decided not to waste the laser power to carve it in the stone.

Maybe that simple fact alone said how much Sarek was counting on rescue.

Then after I helped Sarek set up the door, and mud-packed it all around, we turned our backs on it and put it out of our minds. It would either work or it wouldn't. There was nothing more we could do.

That morning's work done, Sarek threw himself into the food problem. He spent the afternoon with me scouring our area. I think he expected to find more sources than I had: the mighty Vulcan come to the rescue. I didn't take umbrage at his perplexity that he couldn't. Or that together we came back nearly as empty handed as I did alone. In fact, having him with me was a bit of a hindrance. I hesitated to do some of my more risky tree climbs with him watching.

Sarek brooded over what he'd seen as I made dinner and as we sat down over our meager evening meal. Finally, he stirred, put down his cup and drew a breath.

"Amanda, I am going to leave you."

I looked at him astonished. "I take it that it's not for another woman. Or is it my cooking?"

For a moment he looked at me as dumbfounded as I had looked at him. Vulcans do have the occasional divorce, but for the most part, infidelity is as rare as my deliberate humor had been lately. He's more used to the latter from me, but I hadn't had much motivation to practice it in our present circumstances. It took him a few moments to understand me.

"I meant," he said, relaxing just a trifle from his Vulcan manner, "that I intend to go farther afield to see how possible it may be for us to relocate. Just for a few days."

"Well, I want to do that too," I said, eagerly, setting down my own fork. "I've been expecting that we'd need to do that. I'll go with you."

"No. I can move much faster, and search further, on my own."

I drew up at that. "I thought we might go back to our old camp."

"Perhaps we shall. However, it is long past time we did a thorough new search of the area, to determine our best future course."

"But you can't just leave me here alone while you go off exploring!"

He flicked a brow. "You have been doing the bulk of the food and fuel gathering on your own for weeks. There will be less pressure with only one for whom to forage. What is the problem?"

"I don't want you going off without me. Anything could happen!" As if in accordance with me, the wood in the fire fell with a crash.

His eyes narrowed, but he turned and methodically built up the fire again. I rose to bring in more wood from outside. Both chores were so automatic, we didn't think about them. It wasn't until he was done, and the fire was blazing again, that he turned back to me. "Are you afraid to stay alone? I don't believe there are any others about. There appear to be no large predators."

"I'm not thinking about that. It isn't safe for you to go off alone."

"It isn't safe for me?" he asked, incredulous. "When you have been foraging alone for weeks?"

"You'll be going into places we haven't been. It could be dangerous."

"It's necessary. As you are well aware."

"Yes. That's why I should go with you."

"When I have scouted a place for us to relocate to, you will."

"No. You're **not** going off alone. I absolutely forbid it." At that heretical word Sarek gave me a look as if I had become some other creature other than the one he expected. It was a look he gave me when I reminded him that no matter how long we'd been bonded, or how long I lived on Vulcan, I was still human. "Amanda." He looked as if he were trying to find some diplomatic way to phrase his next words. "It is not traditional for--"

"**Stuff **tradition. And they're yours, not mine." I rose so quickly, I nearly knocked my cup into the fire. Sarek grabbed it reflexively before a drop spilled and he handed it back to me. It was all I could do not to throw it in his face.

"Perhaps not. But as they are mine--"

"I **don't care**. You just can't go. Not without me."

"Amanda --"

We went round and round in a circular, painful argument neither of us had breath or strength for. Believing he was right, Sarek was immovable. By his tradition, he also felt he had the right to give me an order to stay behind. And by that same tradition, if I were a good Vulcan wife, I was bound to obey him. But that was Vulcan tradition. While I yielded to it at times on Vulcan, simply because I picked my own battles -- though I'm not sure Sarek fully understood that -- I didn't feel at all bound to respect it here in this situation. Nor did Sarek presume to use the emphatic mode with me under these circumstances. I think he knew we were well past that. But he simply refused to accept my protests. I argued; I presumed to give **him** orders. I suppose I could hardly argue when he ignored those as handily as I did his orders to me. I even nearly came to tears.

But I was past that too. When it because obvious that I wasn't going to change his mind and he wasn't going to let me go with him, I finally subsided. In another life, we might have carried on the argument. In another life, we would have had strength to spare for these kinds of fruitless contests.

"How far are you going?" I asked.

"Far enough to see if there is a way out of this area."

I shivered and bit my lip, not liking the sound of that. Not to mention being chilled by exhaustion and starvation and dread. I hugged myself, cold in spite of the built up fire. "You have to come back. Promise me, Sarek. **Promise** me."

"Of course."

I was furious at that. "You can't **really** promise me," I threw at him, with human perversity damning him for what I just requested. "You don't know. And you're leaving me now, on this horrible planet, maybe to die alone." When he came to me, I turned my back on him.

Perhaps it was unfair, but at the moment, I hated him for what he was doing. I turned away from him, and jerked away even from his touch. I'd never done that before, but if, in some human part of my mind it was the ultimate female weapon, certainly it was a deadly one in respect to a Vulcan with a fatal mating cycle. But in spite of it, Sarek didn't relent.

He didn't try twice. I spent a cold, lonely night.

I was sorry for my behavior, and the next morning wanted to apologize. But he had left in the night, while I was sleeping, was gone before I woke the next morning. He hadn't taken nearly the things I would have made him take, that I thought he should have taken with him. He'd left nearly everything for me.

I did cry then. Not much, because there was work to do, with Sarek there or not. Food to gather, fuel to get.

It was getting chilly. When it was windy or there was a cold rain falling, like today, it was difficult for me to force myself out of our shelter. That made me all the more determined to gather what supplies were available. I knew every drop of rain further affected the limited food that was out there, rotting and spoiling it.

I went as far afield as I could and get back to shelter that night, gleaning anything available, no matter how small or wizened, or spoiled. I didn't see a sign of Sarek. The bulk of the food I saved for him. Eating sparsely had become a habit for me. And I doubted he'd stop to eat at all.

Three more long and lonely days went past. I didn't think about them. I tried not to think about anything. I worked and hauled and worked some more until I couldn't work any longer. And then I slept too exhausted for the nightmares I was unwilling to face. I didn't want to think, or dream, until he came back. I was in waiting mode. Terrified at the core, to think of what would happen if he did meet with some accident, if he couldn't come back. Too terrified to let that dread into my conscious thoughts. Too terrified to do more than fall into the kind of exhausted sleep that didn't allow for dreams. It was safer that way. I was perfectly prepared to keep on like this forever, until I couldn't work any more or until I didn't wake.

Or until he came back.

He came back the fourth night. It was raining again, a damp cold almost sleety rain. I heard a rustle and then he was beside me in the shelter. He was shivering violently.

I had plenty of wood dried and ready, and a pot of water kept warm over the embers. I built up the fire and helped him pull off his damp clothes and bundled him in the heat reflective sheets. Wet clothes were not warmer than no clothes, as we had learned. His fingers were stiff with cold as they wrapped around the drink I made. I put food on the fire to heat and then pressed close to him, trying to warm him with my own body heat while we waited for the food.

Sarek eventually stopped shivering, or at least got control of it. He sipped the hot drink I'd made of water and crushed berries, and then downed it all without pause and then, without waiting for the food to fully heat, reached out as if to take it out of the fire with his bare hands. I took it before he burned himself and put more food on to warm, all that I had.

"Didn't you eat at all?" I asked, refilling his cup as he practically inhaled the first helping.

He shook his head. "I was moving too fast to stop for food." Then he coughed, a racking cough that scared me.

"You're sick," I said, dismayed. "You're never sick."

"I will soon be well," he said, and coughed again. The drink I'd handed him shook in his hand and I took it from him before he spilled it. When he caught his breath I handed it back, steadying it with my own hands as he drank. He finished it quickly before speaking again. "It is just a chill. I will need to use a brief healing trance, however. Tomorrow, after I have rested a bit."

I didn't like the sound of that. Healing trances were needed by Vulcans only on the rarest occasions. Most of the time, they could heal themselves without such drastic measures. I hugged him tighter, and wordlessly offered him the last of the food. He finished it all, too distracted to realize what he was doing. Then, his shivering finally slowing as the warmth penetrated, he lay down and slept. I built up the fire and kept it high all night. But the next morning he was feverish. I had virtually no food and not much hope of getting the amount he needed in my usual way, not in any reasonable time. And I needed time to gather fuel too, after my reckless use of it.

So I threw five thousand years of Vulcan scruples aside and went hunting.

It took me two hours, but I caught a bird. I'd been watching those birds for months. I knew their habits and ways. The small animals whose tracks I occasionally saw by the streams never showed themselves, but birds were frequently around me as I worked. I netted one with the overskirt of my tunic, and broke its neck. It was a quick kill and a clean one. I said a brief apology to the bird's spirit, if you want to call it that. Then I brought it back, stripped it of its feathers, threw it in the pot with water and cress and a handful of grain and made the equivalent of chicken soup. When it was ready, I forced it down Sarek's throat. Not because he was protesting – he wasn't conscious and it wasn't healing trance -- but because his fever grew progressively worse and he was racked with coughing. I kept him wrapped up in the reflective sheets, kept the fire built up, kept pouring the broth down his throat. And prayed. I never left his side except to relieve myself and get more wood.

Even though he was thin as a rail that marvelous Vulcan constitution worked in his favor. By evening, though his cough was still bad, his fever was down, and the next morning, he was awake. I came in, a bird in my hand, and stopped dead. He looked at me, and looked at the bird and weak as he was, tried to sit up.

"Don't," I said.

"Amanda." His voice was even but the reproach in his manner was all the more cutting for that. I flushed like a child caught in mischief.

"It was dead already," I lied through my teeth. "And you needed it."

"You came across two dead birds?" He asked, with a trace of irony.

"You needed it. Don't argue with me."

He didn't argue. He didn't have the breath for it. But he turned his head away and wouldn't touch the second bird. I knew what that cost him, so I didn't plead with him. I hadn't eaten in a day, so I unrepentantly ate it myself. Sarek was already deep in a healing trance.

I cried as I ate, feeling terrible, not just for the betrayal Sarek had tacitly accused me of, but for the betrayal of my own scruples. Not in killing the bird, but in betraying him. Vulcans did occasionally take life, sentient or otherwise, but it was a personal choice, logically arrived at and deeply regretted. What I had done hadn't just been killing another creature. I hadn't been a vegetarian before I met Sarek. I had eaten meat before our marriage. I preferred the Vulcan way, when it came to that, when it was an option. It wasn't an option now.

And that's what I regretted even more than taking the bird's life. The change our own lives had taken. Killing for defense, eating meat, it was all just a series of steps away from who we once had been, or at least, what we once had striven to be. And I had liked what we once had been. I was afraid of what else might lie ahead of us, the choices we were being forced to take. The choices between what we had been, and surviving to become some other people.

But did we have any choice but to survive? The one thing I was sure of was that it takes a lot of doing to die.

After I ate my bird, I went out again, but this time food gathering in the usual way. Sarek would be hungry when he came out of trance.

He didn't speak of it to me again. I didn't try to force meat on him again either. Nor did I go bird hunting again. I came back with my scanty score of vegetarian finds, and prepared them and waited for Sarek to wake.

I knew Vulcans used extreme stimulation to bring themselves out of trance, though I had scant experience with it. Sarek was never ill and if he had been, he would have been under a healer's supervision. But there was no healer here, and when he called me, I was prepared to slap him awake.

I hated the thought. It really is such a terrible thing by human standards, to strike a loved one who is ill. Even if he is asking you to do it.

I managed it once. Then guilt and pain overwhelmed me, not so much for the slap, but for the way we'd parted, the harsh words and the stress, guilt and worry that had tortured me for the last week. After the first slap, I broke down in tears. I couldn't do it.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," I said. "I'm so sorry."

"Amanda."

"Please forgive me."

"Amanda, don't."

Maybe my pain, the pain of a bondmate, was more of a stimulus than any inconsequential slap. At least Sarek was awake. But I was still crying, not quite realizing it.

"I am so very sorry."

"Amanda." He put his arms around me. At that point, when I realized he was back with me, acting normal, seemingly recovered, my anger resurfaced.

And then, with the perversity of humans, when it was no longer necessary, I **did** hit him. A lot harder than I did when he needed it.

"You bastard! You're never going to leave me like that again! Coming back half dead. And don't you **dare** die on me now! Don't you dare! Or ever again!"

Sarek rubbed his ribs where I had clouted him. "Your timing, my wife, leaves much to be desired. I **am** awake."

"How could you leave me like that?" I railed.

Sarek blinked, laboriously thinking back. "We had agreed…"

"I don't mean leaving. Though that was bad too! But I mean not saying good-bye to me. When we didn't know -- How **could** you leave with those hard words still between us?"

He looked puzzled again. "They were your words."

"I was sorry for them. You ought to have known that, if you had stopped to think."

"Amanda, I did understand that you were momentarily upset at the necessity of my going. Do you think I didn't understand the nature of your real regard? If so--"

I drew up at this casually confident assumption. Sometimes being married to a Vulcan means more transparency than even you expect. Not to mention that of all emotions, Sarek could hardly be said to be free of pride. "I don't know whether to hit you again for that overweening sense of self worth, or--"

"Please don't."

I let go of my anger. Not caring about his Vulcan reserve, my emotions did a sidesweep and I did my very best to squeeze the breath of out him in a ferocious hug, starting up his coughing again. "I don't care how insufferable you are. I am so glad you are back!"

"Does that mean you will cease these violent emotional fluctuations?" Sarek asked, looking down at me warily. "This expressive effluence--"

"Oh, shut **up**!" I said. And hit him again. And I hugged him. I suppose I am a great example for why Vulcans think all humans are slightly batty.

If he hadn't have been sick, he'd never have let me get away with that expression, but as it was – or perhaps he didn't want to encourage his crazy wife -- he let me have the last word in that. But not in everything.

"Next time I am ill, I will be sure to seek the assistance of a skilled healer," he said, rubbing his ribs where I had clouted him. "It will be less dangerous."

"There won't be a next time. You're not going to get sick, ever again," I told him, with all the emphasis English can have, lacking a true emphatic mode. "I forbid it."

"Amanda," he shook his head, human style.

"Hey, you try to pull it off with **me**."

"With very little success. But I **will** endeavor to fulfill your request in this case, impractical as it may seem."

"You'd better."

"It will be far less injurious to my person."

"Sarek!"

"I'm cold," he said calmly, ending that discussion and proceeding to make me useful in a purely human way.

It was one way of making up. Though neither of us were well enough to do more than keep each other warm in a purely platonic way; it was still nice.

Sarek could probably have used a few days in a warm, dry bed on Vulcan, but he was up that day, though I refused to let him go out. That he let me have my way said more about how bad he was feeling than any influence I had over his actions.

I made our equivalent of tea, using something I had found in the last two weeks. It reminded me of rose hips. I had hoped to eat the berries, but they were impossibly bitter and I had no honey to sweeten the resultant drink. But Sarek agreed it contained necessary nutrients. I hadn't been sure, the taste was so astringent, but I trusted his exquisite sense of taste. I might have poisoned myself in the first two weeks blundering around finding food, if I hadn't had Sarek around to taste something and detect if something had toxins or dangerous druglike compounds in it. I had been so hopeful over a cache of mushroom-like fungus that I had wasted an afternoon picking and dragging a wagon-load back. Sarek said they were so dangerous he worried even that I had touched them. He insisted we throw away all the other food in the cart and wash down the cart and ourselves, even bathing himself in the stream and both of us washing our clothes and huddling under our reflective blankets till they dried, after we had dumped and buried them. My track record was thus questionable; but he hadn't poisoned us yet. So as nearly unpalatable as the brew I fashioned from it was, we drank our rose hip tea with at least the sense that though it might not taste good, it had some value. We probably wouldn't be drinking it long anyway; I had only found a few shrubs with the hips still on them. Over this bitter tea, we had a confab over what Sarek had found while scouting.

He drew a map out for me in the ash of our hearth as we sat before the fire. Where we were. Where the bombings had been. It was months ago, but Sarek, of course, remembered their position exactly. And what Sarek had found as far as habitable areas. He had moved fast, but what he had found was not good news. Our stolen aircar hadn't taken us nearly far enough from the bombed colonies. We were largely hemmed in. While to the north there was a corridor that might be navigable to a safe area it was surrounded by danger zones – and north was not the idea direction to take, with winter coming on. Ten miles to the south was another toxic area. Twenty miles to the west was another. To the east was the river.

"So you're saying we can only go north?" I asked, not liking the sound of that.

Sarek shrugged. "I wouldn't advise it."

"Neither would I," I said. "I was hoping we could go back to our other camp."

"I was looking for some better solution than that."

"Whatever we do, we can't stay here," I said. "At least for now, let's go back there. I **want** to go. I liked it better there. And even if it doesn't have as much food in the long term, it has to be better than here, now. We **can't** stay here. If we decide we have to go North in the future, it's not that long a walk."

Sarek looked at me for a long moment. At the time, I didn't really understand what was in that look. That he knew there really was no good place for us to go. So that a place I was happier in was enough for him.

All I knew at the time was that he agreed.

The next day we packed up our cart with our few possessions. And we went back to the place that I had come in my mind to consider home.

In that, I was happy.

_To be continued… _


	11. Chapter 11

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 11**

After days of rain and cold winds, the day we started back to our original camp was a gift: sunny and almost warm, by human standards. Since the weather had taken a nice turn, we took our time walking back. We paused often to gather whatever food we could find, thoroughly gleaning unspoiled patches of grain, nuts and fruit when we came across them, and piling our cart high. At night, we would build a fire in a clearing. While we rarely found a natural shelter, we rigged a combination ground cloth and tent out of one of the reflective sheets and rolled ourselves up in the other. We wouldn't have been able to do it if the weather turned nasty again – not even Sarek. But the weather held.

Truth to be told, part of the reason we took our time going back was that neither one of us was in the greatest shape. Sarek had yet to completely get over his cough. I don't think his Vulcan lungs had ever recovered from the insult they'd sustained during his near drowning in the river. I was limping more than ever. But with the sun shining, and a cart filling with food, walking toward a good shelter, it was a pleasant enough trip. And we savored it. We hadn't been together all that much while Sarek was busy with his chores and I with mine. And before the war, he'd been caught up in negotiations for months. Before that, in our other lives, we had our respective careers. To spend day after day together, solely in each other's company was something that simply hadn't happened often in our marriage. In fact, given that even alone in whatever homes we'd had, Sarek had had with him a retinue of aides, attendants and servants, it was safe to say we'd never been so alone. And we'd rarely had time before where neither of us had duties taking us in separate directions. Now, after the recent fight over his scouting departure, we had the luxury of retrieving our relationship, enjoying each other's company and working together toward a simple common goal of gathering food and going 'home'.

In this planet where his recent survey seemed to confirm we were entirely alone, Sarek finally dropped some of his Vulcan reserve. Rather than behave outside of our shelter as if we were in "public", he now behaved as if the whole planet was an extension of our private quarters, meaning he relaxed his usual Vulcan sensibilities about public touch, which oddly or not, we'd been hanging onto. Force of habit, I suppose. In whatever embassy or home we'd lived in, there had been other people there too, people that it would have been impolite to behave so before them, except in our private quarters. But now there was just us. We often walked hand in hand now, or when I got tired and was limping more than usual, arm in arm. Perhaps it was just that Sarek acknowledged we could both use the support. He was more than a little battered too. Perhaps we were just letting go of one more useless trapping from our past lives.

We only talked about it once. Sitting before our campfire. Sarek was meditating, eyes locked on the fire. I was idly star-gazing, trying to find some familiar constellation in this far flung arm of the galaxy. We both were hunched up under our reflective tarp to keep warm. After a while, he finished his meditations, unfolded his hands and looked down at me.

"You won't find Sol visible from here," he said, commenting on a habit of mine, to look for my birth sun from where ever we were posted. Usually it wasn't visible. For all that humanity gives itself airs believing they are the major ruling force of the universe, Sol itself is a dim star, and not in a central location in the galaxy.

"I was just looking for anything familiar. Funny how hard it is to recognize anything when the perspective changes."

He flicked a brow at my choice of language. Vulcans wouldn't find it funny; they'd consider it logical. But he was used enough to my turns of phrase he didn't comment. Instead, he gave me an astronomy lesson for this sky, pointing out Rigel and Tellur, and Andor. "And there," he concluded, "is Eridani. Quite bright this evening. There is very little haze. You can almost see the tri-part halos."

I, of course, could not see any halos, haze or not, not having his keener vision. But if I followed along the line of his finger, I finally discerned a tiny pin-prick of a star with a faint reddish glow. "Is that really Eridani?"

"It is indeed. All night," he added, with an attempt at a tease.

I gave him a scornful look for such a poor effort, but didn't spare much time for it before going back to look at this talisman, so far out of reach. "And it has really been there, all this time?"

He blinked at that. "It would be unfortunate for the residents of Vulcan and her sister planets, if Eridani were not, in general, always firmly fixed in her standard galactic orbit."

"Oh, Sarek. That's not what I meant. You mean, you could see it all this time?"

He tilted his head in a Vulcan shrug. "There have been hazy or rainy nights--"

"That's not what I meant. I mean, you've always known it was there?"

He just raised a brow at me, as if I had asked him if he could have forgotten his own name.

"I didn't quite mean that." I didn't pursue it further. No wonder we seemed to spend half our marriage asking if we understood each other. We had such different mindsets. I gave it up for now, and settled back down against him, looking at the tiny pinprick of red. "So near, and so far. Does it bother you?"

"Bother me? To know Eridani is in the heavens?"

"To see it hanging, just out of reach."

"Not quite 'just' out of reach," he qualified.

"You know what I mean. You don't find it frustrating?"

He tipped a brow at that.

"I suppose you don't."

He looked down at me. "Do you?"

I sighed, and looked down at my fingers, pleated up the reflective sheet. "I haven't had much time to think about it, before."

"Precisely."

"But now," I looked back up again at the stars Sarek had defined for me. I knew them all so well. Knew their planetary systems, their principal capitals, their government buildings, many of their planetary representatives. I imagined them all going about their various businesses, dealing with Federation politics. Sarek knew them all, even better than I. Looking back at Eridani, I thought about everyone on Vulcan there. Knowing Sarek was lost, perhaps dead, things must be in a considerable turmoil there, though being Vulcan, not a hint of that would show. But still, they must be worried about him. Even in the Federation, his presumed loss must be the cause of some concern. "Where are they all?" I wondered out loud. "How can no one be looking for us? For you, at least."

"This system is in chaos. There's been a war. It may have moved on from this colony to the antagonistic systems. No doubt has. The quadrant may be under severe military restrictions, even if the Federation has moved in."

"If?"

"There are sovereign considerations, even in a civil conflict between systems. You know as well as I that the Federation must move doubly carefully, with a war actually commenced, and if they have no other intelligence. Too abrupt intercession could spark a greater conflagration. And they undoubtedly have concluded that we died in the first explosion."

I bit my lip at that. "Not everyone will think that."

"Perhaps not. But such convictions are seldom considered valid evidence. Someone will come. Eventually. Not necessarily for us."

"Eventually." I paused to consider that. "Months? Years?"

"It depends."

"Aren't you going to quote me odds?" I asked, half afraid to hear them.

His fingers, ever so briefly, carded through my hair. "Only if you wish," he said finally. "And you will have to be specific as to what odds you desire to hear."

"For a quick pickup, they're not good, are they? In general."

A pause, while he looked down at me. "I believe not."

"Then I don't want to hear them." I sighed and reached out a hand, which he took. I lay back against him, and we both looked up at the stars. "It's a beautiful night, isn't it?"

"Yes."

I knew, and he knew, it would not be beautiful for ever, or for long. But it was beautiful now. "It could be worse," I said finally.

"Worse?"

"We could be on Tellur." Leaning against him as I was, I could feel the slight contraction in his stomach muscles as he controlled his reaction to my joke. I turned over to look to see if I could discern it in his face.

"Amanda," he said, chiding me, and he shook his head, ever so slightly in reproof.

"Admit it; that's why you love me. Because I make you laugh."

"You **don't** make me laugh."

"But I nearly got you **that** time."

He drew himself up in Vulcan demeanor. "No."

I held my own counsel over the reaction I'd felt in his body. "But you do love me."

"You are quite incorrigible. How can you--?"

"Admit it, you do."

"I--" Sarek said, and then he bent his head down, and made me forget what he refused to say in words, in deeds.

Indeed. It was quite a lovely night.

And if Eridani blushed a little redder, perhaps she shouldn't have been watching.

_To be continued…._


	12. Chapter 12

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 12**

We finally arrived back our old camp on sunset of the fifth day after we started traveling, our cart laden with all we could glean, however wizened or small.

The camp and all the things in it, which we had so abruptly abandoned on the day that the downed corvette had crashed, were still there, untouched. That was reassuring. The planet had taken a beating, particularly the colonized areas. But there were still these relatively unspoiled pockets of safety, where you could almost imagine nothing had ever happened. If you didn't count camping out in a cave as being nothing.

Sarek soon had a fire going. We celebrated our return by having a really good meal. On the trip there, I'd found some eggs by a pond that looked as though they must have come from some waterfowl bird. Though there were no birds, the eggs were there for the taking.

We took them.

They were larger than songbird eggs, the yolks a deep orange. We collected half a dozen of them, and for the next six days we feasted on nut bread that tasted rich and buttery. Almost too rich; we weren't used to such extravagance. With rose hip tea sweetened with a raided honey nest, and a cache of wizened but still edible fruit for dessert, we had all we could eat for that week, and after dinner, we felt full and happy.

And the good weather continued to hold. Sarek probably had no notion of it, but I thought what we were experiencing was the equivalent of Indian summer. I knew it from Terra – that first bitter chill during the equinox, the heavy line rains, a burst of changing seasons and wintry cold and then a period of gorgeous clear weather.

With the planet giving us this temporary reprieve before full blown winter, we enjoyed a sweet autumn. The nights were cold and tipped with light frosts, and the sun set earlier each day. So we had progressively longer nights, meaning each day was not only a little shorter, but a little colder. But the days were still clear and bright and sunny.

And while the weather was good, we had to do something to winterize our shelter.

After some discussion, as to whether to barricade the cave opening with one of our reflective tarps -- I nixed that on the grounds they were too precious to waste, and I had other ideas for at least one of them – Sarek hauled rocks to narrow the opening, and I made another wicker door. With rocks and the wicker panel packed in layers of dried mud it soon was windproof. With a good fire we almost didn't feel the evening chill in our shelter. Well, I almost didn't.

I knew it was only a brief respite, this good weather. That it wouldn't last long. Eventually these light, frost tipped mornings would end with a killing frost. And then I wasn't sure what we'd do. But I didn't apologize for living in the moment, when the moments were good. And for these few weeks, they were. And we needed this period to rest and regroup.

While we'd been away this area had been ungleaned by anyone. And in our absence my gleaning skills had improved, and I had Sarek now, to help. Together we found more food than we needed for our daily meals. We stored up the remainder and gained back a little of our lost weight. Gathering was comforting work, and at the end of the day, after a good dinner, we had long evenings where we could process and store our food -- looking over fruit for rotten spots that might cause others to spoil, grinding grain, storing nuts and honey, and even brief respites where we could warm ourselves by the fire and just rest and recover our strength. At first, we slept more, we were so exhausted. But after a week of catching up on rest and good meals, after Sarek lost a little of his pinched look, and I got some of my appetite back, we actually had time in the evenings, after our meal was finished and our gathered food stored and cleared away, when we had the energy still to stay awake for an hour or so before sleeping, and chat. Eventually to plan.

"Aren't you glad I suggested we come back here?" I asked one evening as I steeped some herbs in water. The leaves had a quality something like chamomile, and we'd taken to drinking it in the evening.

"Glad," Sarek mused, as he raked part of the fire down into coals and carefully added the rack full of nuts I'd set up to toast, then settled down to warm his hands by the fire. "An odd emotion to suggest in these circumstances."

"Oh, Pollyanna, play the glad game," I teased, while he flicked a brow in tacit acknowledgement of my reference. I had an antique hardbound paper copy in my library back on Vulcan, bound in, of all things, pink silk, presumably for some long ago girl child. After hearing me mention it periodically over the years, he finally succumbed to Vulcan curiosity and read it himself, so that he could, as he said, understand the source text of my oblique references. And actually said that, emotional excesses aside, the philosophy was in some respects very Vulcan. One reason I've never been too picky about hearing the actual words "I love you" from my husband. When you see him bent over a pink silk book, reading an archaic English children's story to better understand his human wife's odd sayings, and actually tells you she's not completely crazy to be quoting them, you know he has got to love you. Nothing else would account for it. Actually needing to hear the words has to redundant, right?

Not to say I wouldn't **mind** actually hearing them. Some day. I still had hopes of it. Though for Sarek to admit it was probably too anathema to his Vulcan image. I never wanted him not to be Vulcan.

"We **are** more fortunate, you know, than most of the residents of this planet." I said, in true Pollyanna style, reaching over to shake the nuts that were beginning to scorch. I shivered a little, at the thought of all those deaths. "Former residents, that is. Sarek, I think these nuts are ready to turn."

"True," he said. He gave me a long look. "Coming back to this camp may not be wise in the long term," he said slowly, as he gingerly flipped the rack of nuts. "But I grant you that it presently is a more hospitable area than the crash site."

I took the brewed tea off the fire and poured it into cups. "If you don't mind, I'd like to take a vacation from worrying about the long term, at least for an hour or so in the evenings. Can we do that?"

"There is no profit to useless worrying," Sarek agreed, cracking a nut with his bare hands and tasting it to determine its level of doneness.

"Showoff," I said. I had to use a rock to open them when he wasn't around.

"If you are rude and insulting," Sarek said, "You may end up cracking your nuts yourself."

I of course, tried to snatch the nut from his hands – a fruitless task, as his reflexes were much quicker. Though it was slightly amusing game to play. Eventually he let me win.

"Amanda," he said, his hand over mine as he handed me the nutmeat. "Eventually we will have to discuss it."

"I know. Will a few more days make any difference?"

"Probably not," he said. And we settled down to sharing the nuts out before our fire.

Idyllic, right?

Not really. I knew Indian summer could be counted in a few scant weeks. I knew winter was coming. We had both seen the map of our position that Sarek had drawn in the ashes of our last camp, after his surveying expedition. The one neither of us could forget.

Where to go, when there was no safe place to go? When you were boxed into a place that could not sustain you? That was the puzzle consuming both of us. Even though we weren't talking about it, yet, in this temporary reprieve, I'm sure it was seldom far from our thoughts.

It was the elephant in the room – or in the cave, as it were. But was there much point to raising it, when we could think of no good solution? And when raising it would rob us of what temporary comfort we'd found?

Survival is an equation, you know. Food and fuel over effort expended, times two. Provided the answer was greater or equal to one, provided we could sustain ourselves here, and for the moment that was possible, we could avoid the discussion, at least for the present.

So we threw ourselves into gathering and providing. With Sarek around to help, the grocery balance sheet stayed in the black for several weeks, giving us time to put off any decision. We stored more food than we ate. And it was such a comfort to see our food store on the side of the cave growing daily.

Because of that, one morning that did turn chilly and rainy, I held Sarek back from plunging into the inclement weather and instead took time to do something I'd been itching to do for weeks, but that we had insufficient light to do by firelight. With half of one of our two tarps, using his tattered tunic as a guide, I cut out a double thickness shirt for him, with an attached hood. I filled it with all the downy puffs of a seed plant that I could find, that I had been saving since the idea first occurred to me. Sealed together, I hoped it would become a reasonably thermal covering.

A seamstress I am not, but he stood patiently while I struggled over fitting it. When I settled down to the tedious act of putting it together, he made the nearly unprecedented offer to make lunch.

I looked up in near shock. "You? Not dial something from a kitchen processor, but actually prepare food? For eating?"

"Amanda," he said, with a warning glint in his eye, knowing exactly what I was referring to. "I do prepare food, on the Forge."

"So long as it's not on a dining table," I teased, and he flicked a brow in acknowledgement.

"Fortunately, or not as the case may be, we have no dining table here."

Sarek had a learned prejudice against preparing meals, at least on a dining table, as it were, after a particularly bad experience on Terra, when torn between a hungry child and a wife who he had decided to let sleep in after we'd attended some late night diplomatic party, he decided to prepare breakfast for our toddler son.

His intentions were good. He'd started off well, setting the table with cereal bowl and milk pitcher. But things had gone wrong soon after, when, shaking some cereal into a bowl, he'd been badly surprised when a toy surprise had come flying out of the box.

In his excuse, it must be said that toy surprises are not known to be contained in any Vulcan food product.

Vulcans were, of course, once a great warrior race, and instincts die hard. Not knowing what this foreign missile was, and presuming its actions alien and potentially hostile, he instinctively reacted to defend the nest. He moved instantly to deflect this dangerous item away from his son and heir, dropping the cereal box and knocking cereal bowl and milk pitcher in his haste.

Being younger and faster (after not spending most of the night in a stuffy diplomatic dinner), and having prior expectations, through a subversive action of his human mother, exactly the prospect of having a toy surprise come flying out of a cereal box, Spock got to it first. Still clueless as to the identity of this mysterious, potentially dangerous item, Sarek demanded that he give it to him.

Deducing he was now to go breakfastless – since his cereal was all over the table and floor -- and apparently believing strongly in the universal principle of 'finders, keepers', Spock was not inclined to relinquish this consolation prize.

It was not to be expected that these interesting developments had proceeded silently, or at least not silently enough in our small Georgetown townhouse. The resulting crash, the following demands and denials, the subsequent exhortations and lamentations soon brought me out of bed to crossly review the situation -- a snowfall of cereal and lake of milk that covered the table and floor, and two stubborn headstrong Vulcans locked in conflict at the center of it all. The smaller one, although no bigger than a fire hydrant, was undeterred by the reputation of his illustrious opponent -- the scourge of diplomatic conference tables -- and had gone to ground under the familiar territory of his dining table to satisfy his curiousity. In the process of unwrapping the plastic around his toy surprise -- now the only dry thing in the room – the scourge's son refused to come out, though his clothes were now soaked by a rainfall of dripping milk, and his hair was full of cereal. By dint of scooting around the central pillar of the table, he could keep just out of his father's grasp, though Sarek's pursuit, it must be said, had been slightly checked by the erroneous belief and astonishment that a father's logical demands should rule over the son's passionate curiosity. Whether it was the influence of his mother's genes, or just that Vulcan disciplines were yet unmastered, passionate curiosity ruled that day. Anyway, before things had escalated much past that, I had arrived.

After some confusion – I think somewhat slowly after a late night of multilingual diplomatic and social knife work – I understood the situation and explained to Sarek the nature of the missile. If it were not that his Vulcan duty and family position dictated he remain a Federation Ambassador, I believe Sarek's faith in his ability to understand human motivations would have suffered the ultimate defeat with the knowledge that humans illogically preload their breakfast containers with recreational items fashioned to look like weapons. One look at his barely functioning wife – I really don't do well on three hours of sleep – was evidence enough that even humans are ill equipped to deal with ravenous kids and unexpected toy armaments early in the morning.

All toy surprises were soon confiscated (later surreptitiously restored by me – I really did need a little peace, though Spock was quickly bored with it, as soon as he deduced what it was and how it worked) – and breakfast was soon resumed after a change of clothes on the hydrant's part, and a few cups of strong tea on the part of his yawning mother. I had also decreed that however late the night before party, the care and feeding of small children was to be in the future handled solely by me. Far from insisting on his share of such revels, Sarek – no fool he whatever venue the negotiation – had agreed. Duty driven as always, in spite of these continual revelations about the illogic of the humanity he was to face that day, he beat a dignified if rapid retreat to the logic and order of his office – though I can honestly say that we were never at a diplomatic dinner that involved toy surprises coming out of the dishes. But of course, there were other surprises over the years. You'd be amazed at what some beings think is suitable entertainment for diplomatic dinners.

It's all good practice. Though Sarek had henceforth made good on his promise to steer clear of preparing meals. Until now, that is.

"And as long as it's not breakfast," I teased, settling down to my sewing, "I guess you can handle it."

"Given it will be a meal for eating, and not intended for additional supplementary recreational activities--"

"Actually a guided missile might come in handy right now. If it could reach all the way to Eridani."

"I rather think even Terrans would not put such a device into a cereal box."

I bit my lip, suddenly horribly homesick. For Terra. For Vulcan. For anywhere, but here. Even Tellur suddenly seemed like a hospitable destination. Come back abruptly to the fact that I was sitting on a dirt floor, dressed in near rags, not exactly as fresh as a daisy, struggling to sew a tunic made of tarp and seedpods, with a needle I'd fashioned out of a punched out piece of scrap metal, with strips of my overskirt for lacing.

"Amanda--" Sarek was looking at me, not having missed my change of expression.

I forced a smile. "I could do with something warm. Why don't you simmer some fruit and grain together? That will make a nice lunch."

"Yes, of course," he said, and backed off gratefully from any further emotional scenes.

And after I blinked my eyes a few times, I could see well enough to get back to my sewing.

What had I thought before?

It's all good practice.

The tunic was a little odd looking compared to the elaborately embroidered Council tunics Sarek was used to wearing, but it was warm and he did wear it.

"It is almost too warm for this mild weather," he said, shifting his shoulders under the uncomfortable fabric.

"Somehow I don't think we are doing as well as we should be," I mused, studying it critically.

"Indeed?"

"The Swiss Family Robinson had a treehouse full of waterwheels and mechanical contrivances after they were shipwrecked. With all our advantages, shouldn't we be doing better? Have set up some sort of idyllic community? Be prepared already for Federation acknowledgement as a civilized colony well able to support itself?"

"Not if it involves living in a tree," Sarek said dryly.

"I suppose trees and waterwheels are not indigenous to Vulcan," I mused, still fussing with the fit around his shoulders. "But a stone house, rather than a cave? A thatched roof, maybe."

"Thatch?"

"Grass."

Sarek flicked a brow at the idea of using grass for a roof. Grass also not being indigenous to Vulcan. "A larger area will require more fuel to heat," he pointed out.

"Very true. And we haul enough wood as it stands. It's true, the Robinsons never had to deal with winter in their desert isle. I suppose we are reprieved from not keeping up with the Robinsons."

"Speaking of winter, are you going to fashion one of these for yourself?"

"Eventually, I guess I'll have to." I gave him a smile. "I'll let you be the guinea pig for it first."

"A pig?"

"Test drive it."

"Ah. Very well. I shall." And, after lunch, he headed off into the wind to gather wood.

But I put off making myself a cape or a smock of the rest. I could do it when it was necessary. At night, with Sarek and a fire to keep warm by, I wasn't too uncomfortable. And for now, during the day I had gotten used to the temperature.

I had mixed feelings about that. Humans, of course, adapt themselves to living in all sorts of conditions on Terra, from arctic snowfields to the driest deserts. I'd adapted to living on Vulcan – though Sarek might disagree in principle, I knew that I had, at least at one point. Even stepping into the Terran embassy there made me shiver with the humid chill, and when I traveled off planet, I had to wrap up to keep warm, or lose that adaption and have to regain it all over again. And as I preferred to keep my hard won adaption to my Vulcan home, I wrapped up.

I'd been very uncomfortable when we'd first gone on the run, but also I had plenty of reasons for discomfort, and the chill had only been one of them. It was a small thing, after all, to lose that Vulcan adaptation. I was more comfortable than if I hadn't adapted. But it was one more thing that made me different than the person I had been. Another step away from that Amanda, to someone I didn't necessarily want to be. An Amanda who didn't have to worry any longer about adapting away from her Vulcan home, because the chances were awfully good she wasn't going home.

No, it was a thought I didn't care to entertain. But as much as I tried to avoid these thoughts, they interceded. It didn't help that the shorter days left less time to gather and more time to skirt around the subject in the longer evenings.

And the other issue that was plaguing me. I kept a hawk-like eye on our food supplies, watching what we brought back, what we ate. I even found myself eating less, trying to stave off the inevitable, trying to keep that balance sheet falsely in the black. But the truth couldn't be denied. We'd moved from having a surplus to barely breaking even. I stayed out later, cheating sunset, sometimes causing Sarek to come after me. But the inevitable happened. The first day that we broke even, I mentally consigned it to bad luck, a bad day. The second time, to bad weather. But even with my eating less, the fact was now too plain to be avoided. Yet still that evening, I was eager for any distraction, even if it meant delving into other tacitly avoided subjects.

"Do you know what I miss most, here?" I asked, tossing a shell into the flames.

"A good meal?" Sarek asked, with some real feeling.

I had to laugh. We had been eating better, so much that I was surprised Sarek would mention that until I indicated I was ready. But our diet was far from adequate in quantity, various in scope or really nutritious. His remark was, of course, an entirely logical assumption for a Vulcan who had largely been living on near starvation rations and was facing more of that prospect in the future. But it was still almost the last thing I expected him to say. Or that I had wanted to discuss. "No. I miss that most basic accoutrement of civilization, beyond food and hot baths. I miss reading."

Sarek flicked a brow in acknowlegement, sat back in thought at that, staring into the fire. "Reading," he mused, as if it was something entirely foreign. Perhaps it was, to him. When Sarek had free time, he went off on the Forge, or he played the Vulcan lyre. He seldom read for recreation, particularly fiction. It was a source of some friction between him and our son, who'd either inherited a love of pleasure reading from me, or was contaminated by my human influences, however you wanted to look at it. Not that Sarek wasn't as well read, or better, than his son. He read all those things that I felt would give him insight into human archtypes, from fairy tales to classic novels, to historically based fiction, and more beside. But for Sarek, reading was an activity he associated principally with learning. With work, rather than recreation.

"You know me," I told him. "You meditate over a problem. I read." I'm not sure he really could understand the concept of reading for pleasure, of losing oneself in a tale, and then coming back to a problem with a fresh perspective. I understood it didn't work that way for Vulcans. I don't think anyone with Sarek's sense of duty would have found 'losing himself' a reputable activity at any time, even as a temporary lapse. His appreciation of fiction always seemed purely analytical to me. He had, however, come to accept that I used reading as he used meditation -- as a way to unwind and regroup before retiring.

"I know you don't spend much time on things like fiction and literature," I acknowledged. "But I really miss it." I hesitated for a long moment. "Shall I tell you a story?" I asked.

He looked at me in surprise.

"We're too tired for anything else," I ventured, almost wistfully. "And it would be a nice change for me."

"If you wish," he said finally. "But if you don't mind, I would rather hear you sing. You haven't, here."

"Is that what you miss?"

For a moment I thought he wasn't going to acknowledge that he could miss anything. But then he flicked a brow and said, "Of luxuries, yes."

"Well, that we have," I said, shaking my head in surprise. "How shocking that we have even one luxurious commodity so easily obtained."

He sat back still further, eyes fixed on me expectantly. And I drew a breath and became a musical Scheherazade. It was surprisingly easy, just watching my husband's face, to concentrate only on him, to forget the past, and not hope for the future, and just sing. We had a lovely evening, that night. We needed one. For that day did mark the turning point I had been fearing since we had returned to our camp. The next day we dipped for the third time from breaking even on food storage and consumption, to being undeniably in the red.

We couldn't evade the reality any longer.

It was the first of all those desperately hungry and hopeless days to come.

To be continued...


	13. Chapter 13

**When the Winter Comes**

**by**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 13**

When winter finally arrived, it came when we least expected it. And it came with a vengeance.

It had been a quiet, gray day, almost warm, that ended in fog hanging low over the ground, and mist half obscuring the trees. By late afternoon, we could hardly see to gather, and there wasn't much to gather even if we could see anyway. But it was too foggy to go far afield and lose our way in the mist. So though finding food was becoming a continual worry, we packed in early, closing our wicker door behind us snugly against the seeping mists and hoping for a better day tomorrow.

That was a futile hope.

Because the nights were now so long, and, truth to be told, as a distraction from eating more when what we were really trying to do was save as much food as we could, we continued our evening entertainments. Since I had sung the previous night, it was Sarek's turn to reciprocate. He did, not by singing or telling fictional stories, but recounting tales of pre-Reform Vulcan, of the history of his clan, of the times of Surak, of their early encounters with the Romulans. I made him tell me these tales in Vulcan, to keep me up in the language. When we're alone together I have a bad habit of speaking in my native tongue. And Sarek, always the diplomat, tends to follow unerringly in any language a conversation begins in. So with me, especially when we weren't on Vulcan, he had a bad habit of speaking English too. After all these months, I felt like I was losing my practice in Vulcan, never an easy language for humans. And it was one way of keeping alive my hope of going home.

It helped, our storytelling and my singing. It added a little bit of civilization – a few gentle hobbies, as King Arthur might say – when things were almost at their worst and we needed to be reminded of home.

In spite of his storytelling, we went to bed early, hopeful for a good start to the morning. I was just shaking out the tarp over our bed of grass and springy branches when Sarek's head went up, listening. He looked at me, and I looked at him, confused. I took half a step toward him. That's when the wind hit.

It sounded like a combination of a dozen star shuttles blasting off, a volcano erupting and an avalanche of an entire mountainside, with the roar of a thousand Arcturian bear cats added in for good measure. I had rarely heard anything so loud, before or since. For an instant, Sarek held his hands to his ears, pained and dazed with it. And then the door began to rattle. Dropping his hands, he leapt across the room to try and hold it closed.

That's when the wind came into our cave, picked him up like a jackstraw, and flung him hard, very hard, across the cave into the opposite stone wall. I wasn't quite in its path, standing a little to one side, but it knocked me against a pile of carefully stacked wood which promptly came down on top of me. Everything in the cave moved, almost exploded, as if the pressure blew up from the ground and food, wood, supplies, water, all our carefully gathered provisions went spinning through the air. Across the cave, Sarek tried to get up, tried to crawl to me, and couldn't, pinned like a fly to fly paper. The pressure was so low, it was hard to get air in our lungs and I found myself struggling to breathe. The noise of the wind was so loud, it was impossible to hear anything else. Sarek made another valiant effort to rise, made a lunge toward the door and the wind blew him back so violently, he knocked his head against the wall, and for a moment lay stunned and unmoving, panicking me. Unable to move myself – even when I crawled, the wind blew me backwards, I cried out his name over and over again, until he raised his head to look toward me. I couldn't hear my own words; the wind snatched them from my lips. He said my name in turn, but the wind tore it away and all I heard was its scream.

Then the rain came, not from above, but in great slashing horizontal sheets, boiling into our cave on the heels of the wind. It drenched us in seconds, soaked our wood, our clothes, our far flung supplies. The wind pushed the water in like a horizontal flood. It filled our mouths, our ears, our eyes, and soon the walls and floor of the cave were running with it.

And still the wind came. It picked up our carefully preserved food and tumbled it, soaked and tossed our beds, ripped what little was left of my overskirt from my body, tore my hair from its plait into wild weaving strands. I couldn't hear. The flood finally breached our carefully built stone and clay walled fireplace, and put out the fire, and then what little flicker of light we had to see by went, and I couldn't see. I felt like I was breathing as much water as air, and I coughed and choked, but couldn't hear that either. I huddled into myself, trying to breathe more air than water, shivering with cold, while rain lashed my skin and the wind roared and roared and roared. Finally the rain lessened somewhat, but the wind went on for hours. I didn't try to move. I couldn't. I just held on, my hands clenched into such tight fists, holding onto nothing, so that the next day my palms had bloody half circle indents in them.

Then the wind began to gust instead of its steady roar. I raised my head and across the cave, dimly in the shadows though he was, I could see the glint of Sarek's eyes as they met mine. We both felt the opportunity. He waited through half a dozen gusts, timing them, and then, in the lull between them, he forced his way to his feet, a black shadow against the deeper dark, with the battered door in his hand. The wind blew him back, using the door as a sail, but he held it sideways and tried again. With superhuman Vulcan strength, he wedged it back into the door, and while the wind buffeted it, and he held it down, I managed to crawl over to him, now that the worst of the wind was held back. I tossed log after log across the cave. We began to pile them up against the door. We had a lot of wood stored in the cave, all of it now heavier and drenched with water. When we had the door barricaded with every scrap of wood we had, Sarek backed away from it slowly. The door rattled and he reached for one of the stones of our fireplace.

"No!" I cried, unable to bear it, "We need that. Anyway, if you take down the fireplace, the wind will come down from above anyway.

He put down the rock reluctantly. We both stood, shivering with exhaustion and hypothermia, watching the wind shake and rattle the door, like a live animal seeking, patting, struggling to get in. Like a monster seeking to eat us alive. I don't know how long we stood there. But eventually, with a final rattle, the worst of the gusts subsided, though outside the wind still howled.

"I think it will hold now," Sarek said finally. He was shaking with cold but otherwise he hadn't moved.

"Now," I said, with a little half laugh, half hysterical sob.

Sarek turned away and went back to the far wall, searching matter-of-factly through the jumble of scattered possessions in the dark flung there by the wind, and came back with our remaining tarp. He began to strip me of my soaked and drenched clothes, but I forestalled him and did it myself, my fingers shaking, while he did the same to his. He hung our clothes over the piled up wood wall against the door, though they wouldn't dry until we could hang them before a fire, and we couldn't do that until morning. Then we wrapped ourselves in the tarp and went to huddle against the far wall, still shivering violently, both our eyes fixed on the door, praying it to hold. Finally, in spite of the shock and cold, we both must have fallen asleep.

When I opened my eyes, Sarek was already awake, though he hadn't moved. His head was up and he was listening intently. I listened too. I could hear a swish, a hiss, like that of a kettle before it's not hot enough to whistle. A constant, steady _shsssssssshhh_.

"What is that, do you think?" Sarek asked, in a low voice, as if trying not to stir whatever it was.

"I don't know."

We waited a while, both of us barely breathing, we were listening so hard. We couldn't really see, in the barricaded cave, with no fire. The first order of business should have been a fire. But we were too uneasy even for that.

Sarek finally rose. He'd been shivering so violently he probably couldn't bear it any longer. Leaving me the tarp, he went to the door. I followed. Slowly he began tossing aside the wood, piece after piece, not bothering to stack it. Finally the door was free. It took him another struggle to unwedge it. It didn't seem to want to move, more so than the night before, when it had been rattling in the opening. Finally it came loose with a crack, and we both stepped back, dazzled.

Ice. That was what had held the door in. Not softly silently falling snow, or sloppy dripping rain, but ice crystals, sleet, falling in a heavy steady pattern. It had blown against the door, and made an ice shield of it. The ground was covered in eight inches of it, more coming down. That was the hissing sound, the rush of sleet. The sun wasn't very bright in the overcast sky, but the ice took what little light there was and reflected it. It was beautiful and horrible at the same time. So much for our hoped for day of good gathering. We couldn't move in this.

"Close it," I said, my voice choked. "Close the door." But Sarek didn't move, and I turned to see what he'd been staring at. And then saw. Everything that we hadn't kept in the cave – everything we'd left outside, was gone, or scattered. Sarek had stacked cords of wood under lean-to shelters, enough to keep the rain off. All that was gone – shelters, wood, all scattered.

"Our cart!" I said. It too was gone, missing from where we had left it at the side of the cave. I almost ran out into the ice, but for Sarek holding me back.

"Not now, Amanda."

I turned away while he wedged the battered door back in the opening. I sank back down on the still flooded floor. While he forced the door back in, there was light enough so that I could see all our carefully gathered food, much of it now flung around the cave, seeped in muddy water, spoiled and ruined. The door closed, Sarek prowled and rummaged around the darkened cave, through the heaps of damp wood and blown leaves and trash and ruined food until he found our metal box that we kept the crash tools in. We never used the firelighters that had been in the kit, considering them too valuable to waste, but now he spent a good fifteen minutes with one, struggling to get the least wet wood to ignite, until we finally had a smoky, sulky and not very warm fire going. He hung our clothes before it and then, exhausted himself, sat down next to me before the dubious warmth of it. It was only when he wrapped the tarp around both of us that I lost it.

"Oh, Sarek," I said. And for the first time, I buried my face in his neck and unreservedly cried. He lowered his head over mine, saying nothing, his own eyes bleak, his breathing ragged with inhaled water. We shivered for a long time, before we finally slept before the faint warmth of the fire.

That was the first bad day of winter. There were more to come.

_To be continued… _


	14. Chapter 14

**When the Winter Comes**

**by**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 14**

Good colony planets are rare. When you think of all the things that are needed to make a suitable home for humankind, or any sentient being, it's a wonder there are as many of them as there are. Size, gravity, basic oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, suitable distance from a well behaved star with no tendencies to throw off unexpected bursts of radiation – these are just the start.

Then there's the planet's surface. It needs to have a good mix of land and water, no excessive vulcanization, continental drift or other geothermal shifts. It's also always best if it's young enough evolutionally the planet doesn't have a lot of advanced life. Colonists have enough to contend with, they don't want to fight for their dinner or their lives against large predators. So nothing above small mammals is generally appreciated. After some unfortunate incidents, where Terran colonists tried to exterminate potential predators on some colony worlds and actually precipitated a war among the Caitans, a large sentient feline species, the Federation now forbids the large scale destruction of any resident life in its new colonies until lengthy studies have determined it isn't sentient. That means whatever is on planet has to be small and innocuous enough not to be a threat, to colonists or crops.

Indeed, so many odd looking – by Terran species – creatures have been determined to be sentient, that I for one begin to understand the Vulcan preference for not killing anything. There's that whole ethical question of where does one draw that 'sentient' line, an issue that precipitates so many fights on the pro colonization front: those who want to exterminate a troublesome species in some far flung world so that it can be safely colonized and the Federation dragging its feet on the question. Actually, it isn't the far flung worlds that create the biggest push; the real gems are those discovered close to known shipping routes.

Sarek had saved the Caitans once by pushing for a no-contact solution much like Vulcans do with lematya, trying to live with them on your doorstep in dubious harmony. It wasn't until years later that the Caitans -- large feline predators who traveled around a huge territory, who didn't care much for technology and, with plenty of natural game, had been willing to shun the few odd, non-prey smelling colonists -- had been discovered to be sentient. The Caitans were then offered Federation member status, and the embarrassed Federation made some monetary restitution for colonizing some of their worlds. And Sarek won a belated award for his insistence years before that the Caitans not be killed.

They tend to vote with Vulcan now and look upon Vulcan quite as an ally. They regard Sarek particularly well, which is hard for him, given he has a Vulcan's near instinctive avoidance of big cats. Well, any cats. Spock doesen't have it; he's actually quite fond of kittens. But Sarek tends to think of any feline as a lematya, and sitting at table with a Caitan can be quite trying for his control.

That's why this planet, whose prey and predators hadn't evolved yet much beyond badger size, was considered eminently suitable. And why Sarek wasn't just being Vulcanly stubborn, but had good reason to be the last person to go around trapping something to kill and eat on this colony world.

And of course, of the many issues that make a good colony world, there's weather. Many Terrans like a planet to have a little tilt in its spin, so it gets seasons. But you don't want too large a tilt, or for the planet to wobble too much on its axis, because that creates violent wind shifts as the planet tries to equalize pressure and temperature. Huge storms, incompatible with civilized life.

Hurricanes, in the human vernacular.

When it comes down to it, planets, with their inhospitable geology, their unpredictable and eventually failing suns, their weather and their wildlife, their unknown epidemiology, and the inevitable squabbling over the few rare good ones, are really the **last** place that humans should live. Unfortunately, they were the first place that humans did evolve. And so humans are prejudiced in favor of living on them. Still, they're considered by some groups to be completely unsuitable for sentient life in any form. These groups are pushing for created worlds, safe, stable man-made biospheres with all such conditions strictly regulated and controlled. They're a small percentage, since most people are old-fashioned enough to believe people should live on planets.

After last night's storm, I may have become a recent convert to the biosphere group. In fact, if I ever get back home, I'm determined to join and make a **huge** donation to their cause.

We didn't lose everything in the hurricane. Most of the wood was still scattered around, and though the shelters protecting it from rain had blown away, the wood would dry out.

But we never did find our cart. I kept expecting we'd come across it, in our wide ranging journeys for food, but apparently it was whisked off to Oz.

Our food was another matter. Our standards for food had never been too high, and were rapidly getting lower. The night of the storm, they, like we, took a body blow.

You wouldn't think you'd eat grain trampled down in mud. But the fact was, after the ice hurricane, I knew there wasn't going to be much food out there clinging to reed, or branch, or stem. So I swept and scooped up what I could from the cave floor, using a reed broom and I washed it in a scrap I'd found of the net of my overskirt – how that netting had provided for us in so many ways – and I began boiling and baking it quickly, before it molded. We'd eat with the crunch of grit in our teeth for a while, because I couldn't get rid of all of the dirt, however I tried. But I was frightened enough to want to salvage every scrap. We'd eat for those few days that the recovered food lasted. After that, I suspected that whether we ate anything was going to be questionable.

While I salvaged what I could, Sarek worked with laser cutter and a scavenged piece of metal, setting wooden brackets into carved niches to better secure the door. He estimated the wind speeds had been up to two hundred miles an hour, and tried to create something strong enough to handle that, frustrated because the power of the laser cutter gave out before he got it quite as deep as he wanted it and we simply didn't have strong enough materials. But the door was far more secure than it had been. Then he stacked the inside wood, sorting it with the driest of it in one pile close to the fireplace. We were going to need it, to dry out and warm up.

The truth was, Sarek wasn't doing well. I'd caught him rubbing his head more than once that morning, a gesture that told me he was in some pain, and had probably sustained a concussion from when he'd been knocked unconscious by the wind when it had thrown him against the wall. Vulcans can't go into healing trance with a head injury. And his breathing sounded awful. I was afraid he had the Vulcan equivalent of pneumonia – in fact, breathing in as much water as air as we had, it was hard to imagine how he couldn't. I let him finish stacking the inside wood while I cleaned up the windblown cave and cooked as much as I could. Then when we had hot food, I made him rest. He didn't argue, which was proof enough he needed rest, though he didn't want to eat. Queasy from his head injury, no doubt. With my urging, he ate a little.

With all that sleet and ice still falling, we couldn't have gone outside anyway. It went on all day, piling up well over my knees. Looking at the powdery glassy stuff, I'd realized we'd need snowshoes to walk in that mess. I had no time to try and figure out how to fashion them. I wasn't sure if snowshoes would even work with a Vulcan's denser frame. For the time being, we barricaded ourselves in. Right now, saving our food and getting warm and dry had to be our first priority.

Our beds were damp, but our clothes eventually dried. With them and the tarp, we managed to warm up a bit. We kept the fire going all day, to dry as much of the dampness out as possible and to keep warm. I pressed the rose hip and chamomile tea on Sarek, using our supplies recklessly, until he complained I was trying to drown him inside as well as outside. It did seem to help the nausea from his head injury. But operating on auto-pilot as I was, I'd forgotten that unlike humans who need lots of fluids when sick, Vulcans didn't evolve to handle large amounts in their system. Sarek finally fell asleep sitting before the fire with the cup still in his hands. I took it gently from him and laid him down and covered him, while he barely stirred. He felt flushed and feverish to me, and he was still intermittently shivering, when his ragged control slipped. One more thing to worry about.

While he slept the sleet had stopped falling – I could hear that much, but then wind shifted in a different direction. It blew across, rather than into our cave. But it was a much colder, bitter wind. Drifts of ice were still forced in around the edges of the door, until they sealed it shut again. The moaning wind, rising to high shrieks, made for an uneasy day. I worried the wind might shift again and batter down the door. I had trouble keeping the fire going at times, because the wind and snow was starving off our rudimentary chimney, and I used wood recklessly to keep the fire hot enough to melt the snow trying to clog the vent. I had desperately necessary work, cooking all the damp grain I could salvage before it was hopelessly ruined. Finally I made a pot of porridge for the last of it, mixed it with cut up fruit, and left that to warm. At last, there was nothing left for me to cook or make, or clean, at least with what supplies I had to hand. I sank down next to Sarek. The rush of the sleet and the flicker of flame were hypnotic in my tired state. At least I had achieved one goal. I was too tired now to worry. Like Sarek, who had fallen asleep cup in hand, I almost became mesmerized by the firelight and the whine of the wind outside. I stirred myself to put more wood on the fire, and then snuggled in next to him. He woke abruptly, and stared at me in a confusion not at all like him. It chilled me more than the cold, for he was such a buffer to me. But when I pressed close, his eyes flickered back to rationality, he settled back down, and we both fell into an exhausted sleep.

What we mostly lost in the hurricane wasn't our food, or our cart, or even Sarek's health. He edged back to functionality the next day, I think if nothing else but through grim discipline. But the conditions we were living under had to be more taxing to a Vulcan. I had him to do the really heavy work; his body heat to keep me warm at night, even when he was shivering with cold. And while Vulcans can fast for long periods, can stay functional with fewer calories in the short run, in general his frame needed more calories than mine, and it was catching up with him. That he was fasting under these trying conditions was stripping his frame even more rapidly than my weight loss. When I put my arm around him to keep warm, I could feel all his ribs. Every bone in his face stuck out in sharp relief. No doubt I was looking as bad to him as he was to me, but there were no mirrors here, for me to make that comparison. He was living on sheer will power, on reserves that sooner or later, had to fail. But I couldn't accept that, in him, or in myself. Not yet.

The next day, the wind continued high. Going out was just not an option, not outfitted as we were. I made myself a tunic like his, cutting it out inexpertly with a knife and stuffing it with some dried grass from our bedding. And I made myself some moccasins. Sarek, fortunately, had been wearing boots when the war started. While they had suffered in immersions and through much tromping, they were still functional. Because I live most of the time on a high gravity world, I don't indulge in ridiculous footwear, whatever the fashions of the planet. Fortunately, nonsensical shoes like high heels – useless in sandy soil – never developed on Vulcan, and they go for practicality in footwear. Even off planet, it has always seemed to me if the dress is long enough, who cares what the shoes are like underneath? Most of the time I get away with ballet-like flats, even in a ballroom when all the women around me are tottering around on stilts. But even my practical flats were totally inadequate for the ground conditions outside. I made myself moccasins out of the same tarp material, laced on the bottom as well as the sides, for traction. That used up all the remnants of the tarp I'd initially sacrificed for Sarek's tunic. Since we had to keep the other for a blanket, that was going to be the extent of our clothes. I hoped Sarek's boots were waterproof, not something usually necessary to consider on Vulcan. I also hoped we'd be walking on top of the snow, after the first expedition out. Certainly we couldn't expect to wade through it and get very far without exhausting ourselves.

That we had water in the cave was one of the great reasons I liked it for a shelter. Perhaps it made the cave a little damp for Sarek – I hadn't thought of that until it did get cold. But it saved us from going out, for even Vulcans need water. We burned wood and worked on my tunic and footgear, and drank warm, fruit laced water and ate sparingly of our food, huddling together to keep warm and waiting for the wind to die down, hoping that it would. Dreading it too, for that meant we'd have to go out in the bitter cold.

It took two more days before snow finally stopped and the wind died enough to risk venturing out. By then we were more than ready. We needed wood, and we were as rested as we could be under the circumstances. And I had a touch of cabin fever. I have a bit of claustrophobia at the best of times. I hate traveling on a starship for that reason – shut into a little box. And after a few days, even the cold sharp air of the outside seemed better than the warmer but danker smoky fug of our cave.

So Sarek cautiously cracked open the door, and we both put up our hands to our eyes, dazzled by the snow white world and bright light outside after our days entombed in smoky darkness.

Snow looks a lot like sand, actually, except for the color and the temperature. And this snow – more like ice than snow, dry and hard and slippery– rather than wet and heavy – had almost the same texture too. I turned to Sarek, to make that comment, and saw the look on his face that he hadn't bothered to conceal. We were very far from Vulcan.

His attention and dismay was fully focused on the task ahead of us. He didn't see that I'd noticed his mask had slipped for that moment.

We moved out into the deep snow. Sarek went to where our woodpiles had been, because we needed wood, and began to dig out the wind scattered piles. The snow was knee deep for him, higher where it drifted. For me it was mid thigh, and it was pretty obvious that we'd get hypothermia if we stayed out too long in this. But I had a specific purpose in mind, and I clenched the knife I held in my hand, and headed off to where I hoped to find suitable vines.

"Amanda?" Sarek turned to me as I waded away.

"I won't go far," I said.

For a moment, he looked at me, and then he nodded once, and went on lugging wood, his hands already green with cold. We couldn't stay out long.

I went further than I wanted too, but I had to find thick vines, to hold Sarek's weight. I spent what seemed like hours cutting and untwisting and stacking a pile of them. Then I added a bundle of thinner twine-like vines, and bound the whole pile with more of the same. It took a while, but I managed to hoist the bundle on my back. Getting it back to camp was a slow awkward business, and several times I went to my knees. But I got back, none too soon for it was getting dark already and Sarek wasn't pleased I was so late, or with what I had brought back.

"There was tinder closer to camp," he said, frowning at my messy bundle of brown vines.

"This isn't tinder. You'll see," I said.

He just looked puzzled. We were going to need food more than anything else soon, for our ravaged stores were almost gone, but we couldn't get food without being mobile.

I'd only used snowshoes a couple of times, at a ski vacation, but I had a picture in my mind of what they looked like, and I explained it to Sarek. His brow cleared as I drew a picture in the dirt. He probably understood the weight bearing mechanics of them instantly, more than I did, and he took over the fashioning of them, while I made us a scanty supper over the fire he got going. After we finished eating, I helped. Working with the vines was vile – they were green, but frozen, and it took a while even by the fire for them to thaw, and then they sprang out of our frostbitten fingers, and snapped us in the face. The thinner vines I had brought back were of uneven quality. Some broke, some wouldn't bend, and I swore softly under my breath as I struggled with them. But finally we were done, and we had two sets of snowshoes. The biggest issue we were going to have was binding them to our feet. We couldn't use vines for that, and we had to sacrifice strips of fabric from our clothes. My much used net overskirt came in for some of it, but I came to the end of it before we had enough. We scrabbled among our clothes for the remainder. The result was pretty shabby looking. Still, I had such hopes they'd be functional that I couldn't wait till morning. I explained to Sarek the peculiar way one walked with snowshoes. He listened skeptically. Then with them bound to my feet to demonstrate them to him, he unbarred the door, and I shambled cautiously out into the starry night. I took a step, and then another – and I stayed on top of the snow! I turned around to share this triumph with Sarek, forgot my footing, tripped over my snowshoes, and landed ignominiously face first in the snow.

Sarek rushed forward to help me up again, but I was laughing rather than hurt, and he let me try again, watching dubiously. This time I managed to stay on my feet while I demonstrated. It was going to take some time to get used to them – even for this short time out, my ankles began to quickly tire, but it was somewhat easier than wading through waist deep drifts. Sarek tried his. I had worried his greater bone density and weight might prove a problem, but he had lost weight and muscle mass while we'd been on the run. But he understood the mechanics and had made his larger, to compensate. His snowshoes held him up as well, and he grasped the hang of walking in them more quickly than me. I raised my arms in a triumphal V and gave a little jump in the air for Victory, and would have tumbled down face first again, but for Sarek's catching me. We shambled arm in arm back into our cave shelter, and hung up our snowshoes side by side, knowing that at least tomorrow, we could move. And move we would have to, at least for foraging, because after a scanty dinner tonight our food would have at last run out.

We started off together the next morning. My initial ebullience at being able to move through the snow -- Sarek was his usual stoic self – soon faded under the true sight of the changed landscape. I had expected it, true. But expecting it and seeing the stark reality was sobering. It was like walking through a wasteland. Very little was recognizable. Almost everything clinging to bush and tree had been blown away, or fallen off and buried under the deep snow. At first, I grew uneasy at the barrenness. Then my heart sank as the scope of the devastation made clear what it meant for us. The minor triumph I had felt over the snowshoes faded away as if it had never been.

I couldn't imagine how we were going to live.

It was terrifying.

As we walked along we saw a huge tree uprooted by the weight of ice on its limbs. It must have happened after the winds died, because the roots and the torn dirt were not covered by snow drifts. And there, among the excavated dirt, were quantities of small round roots, like turnips or legumes or potatoes. And a dead animal, one of the small ground dwellers whose tracks I'd seen, but never encountered. It wasn't a pretty sight, an opossum like creature, more akin to a rat than a hedgehog, and its lips were drawn back from its teeth in a death grimace. But my attention was riveted to all the nodules in the torn dirt, nodules that had clearly attracted the starving animal. It had one in its teeth.

"Sarek? Can we eat them?"

He took out the knife and bent down, dug one out of the dirt, and sliced it open to where the clean white flesh oozed water. He put a finger to the flesh, dampening it, and licked the finger gingerly. And then hastily spat out the scant trace, and then gathered some snow and scrubbed his tongue clean, spitting out the snow until he eradicated it all. And shuddered. "A highly toxic alkaloid. Not safe for Vulcans or humans."

I sighed and focused on the dead animal. "Well, we can eat **that**, anyway."

"Amanda!"

"It died so quickly, the poison can't possibly have permeated its flesh."

"Vulcan's don't--"

"It's already dead."

"Like the bird?" Sarek asked narrowly.

"We need it. I'll clean it. Give me the knife."

For a long moment he hesitated. Then he handed it over.

I had never actually cleaned even a fish, much less an animal, but I had cooked chickens and even a turkey during one Thanksgiving in graduate school, when I invited a host of friends in. I knew what a gutted bird looked like. An animal couldn't be much different.

I slid the knife under the skin. Careful not to ruin the pelt, for I could think of myriad uses for it, I did my best to slice it off in one piece. Then I opened the body cavity. The smell made me gag, but I quickly tipped the intestines and scraped the other internal organs from the cavity into the earthen pit and buried them. Maybe some of them were edible, but I had no idea what might be, and the animal had died of poison. I just wanted the muscle flesh. I struggled a little trying to joint the animal like a chicken, -- the sinews I needed to sever were surprisingly tough for such a small animal, and already stiffened.

"Amanda."

I didn't look at him. "Sarek, I have to do this. I know it must be hard for you--"

"Amanda." His hand covered mine, and he took the knife from my blood-stained hand. "Let me."

I moved aside, and cleaned my hands in the snow. He made short, quick work of dismembering the limbs and the back, leaving the head and tail. Maybe he just couldn't stand risking me hurting myself with a knife. He bound the limbs together in the skin with a strip of sinew as if he hunted and prepared a kill every day, and hung the animal from his belt. He cleaned his own hands in the snow, before giving me a hand up.

And that was it. We went on.

We didn't see any more animals. The world was silent, except for the wind in the frozen tree limbs. We only found a small amount of other food. One was a cache of the rose hip like berries, flung still attached to their uprooted bushes and frozen by the side of a hill, where a large amount of debris had been tossed. We went back and forth there for a while, where the wind had piled brush twelve feet high. I dug out some of the pear-like mealy fruits. They were hard frozen, but still edible. The piled up brush was so thick, that we couldn't get deep into it. And we were suffering from the cold. My feet were blocks of ice, and my hands were stiffening, and Sarek was a pale chartreuse with cold. We couldn't afford frostbite, and after I gathered half a dozen of the pears, Sarek suggested it was time to go back.

It was almost past time. I realized how lucky I was to have Sarek with me, because in the gathering dusk, and with the world transformed by ice and snow, I don't think I could have have found my way back by myself, even with my compass, and that had been a casualty of the hurricane, so choked with mud and water I hadn't brought it with me. Sarek didn't think twice about our direction, unerringly pushing through the brush, even taking a short cut away from our scuffed path, which was rapidly disappearing in the dark anyway. I put out my hand to his, grateful to have him around and after a moment, he took it, looking at me inquiringly.

"I'm glad you're here," I said. "Well, no. I don't wish you were here – I don't wish either one of us to be here. But if you have to be here, I'm glad you're here."

"That, my wife, is one of your better non-sequiturs. And nearly incomprehensible."

"But you know what I mean."

His hand tightened briefly on mine. His fingers were cold, but still warmer than mine, and had their surprising, reassuringly inhuman strength. "Yes."

We walked on, and just as we reached the clearing with our cave, the stars came out. It would be a clear night, and thus a cold one. But we had food for at least one more day, and fuel for our fire. We were hungry, but would soon be eating. We were cold, but would soon be relaxing before a fire. And if that wasn't hope, what was?

As I so often did, I looked for a familiar talisman in the heavens, and failed to find it.

"Where is it?" I asked my Vulcan oracle.

"Where is what?"

"Which one is Eridani?" I asked him, scanning fruitlessly through the confusing star field for that small red reassurance.

"Eridani?" he replied, as if he didn't quite understand me.

"Vulcan."

"I thought you knew," Sarek said.

"Knew what?"

"At this season," Sarek said quietly, "We are no longer able to see it." He untied the dead animal from his belt and carrying it, stepped into the cave.

I looked after Sarek, speechless with dismay. It was surprising how much Eridani's absense from the night sky bothered me. Made me feel more alone. More lost. Even though I couldn't usually find it on my own, without Sarek to point it out to me, I counted on its being there. That it was gone in this worst of seasons quite blunted my momentarily optimistic mood.

I tried not to think of it as an omen.

And that's what we -- or at least I -- mostly lost in the ice hurricane.

Hope.


	15. Chapter 15

**When the Winter Comes**

**Chapter 15**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

Only cold made me duck into the cave. Illogical though it would seem to Sarek, Eridani's lack of visibility had upset me – one more body blow upon a spirit that was as tottering as I was upon snowshoes.

Then there was the whole issue of cooking meat. I was hungry. We were hungry. I certainly wasn't going to let any edible food item go to waste for a scruple that in an already dead animal could hardly matter. But that didn't mean I wanted to deal with preparing a dinner of meat before my Vulcan husband, nor presume that he would eat it. He'd offered to joint it for me, and had said nothing about eating it himself. I wasn't sure if the sight and smell of it cooking was going to make him sick. And it wasn't as if, in our single-roomed cave, he could go anywhere else.

I didn't even quite know **how** to cook it.

The truth was, that even I, I who was trying to be optimistic, trying to be a good sport through all this, trying not to be a whiny complainer – I knew when I married Sarek I had been taking a risk, that my life might have myriad unknowns, that it might not always be a rose garden, though I hadn't quite foreseen this – even I had my limits.

But there was no where else for me to go either. I stepped into the cave, and Sarek barred the door behind me.

We always left our fire banked into coals, to save having to start it again. He had built it back up and it was crackling nicely. The food we'd brought back, including the animal, was by the fire.

The mealy fruit was frozen and desiccated with windburn. After some thought, I decided to chop it up, and cook it into a sauce. That would give him an alternative if he was too repulsed to eat the other.

After that was simmering over the fire, I undid the fur around the animal and set it aside, intending to peg the pelt out to dry. Strips of lacings, or a cap, or a muff – something useful would come out of it.

I sat back and looked at the meat. Suddenly, I felt really tired. Sarek was stacking wood from the cord of drier wood by the wall against the fireplace for the night's burning, one of our inevitable, wearisome chores. As he knelt beside me to arrange the new wood he'd gathered so that it would dry further, I sighed and said. "I'm not sure I can really do this."

"Amanda?"

"This." I pointed to the meat. "I don't have the strength to push you, or fight with you over it, or even deal with your distaste. Is this going to be a problem for you?"

"I brought it back, didn't I?" he said evenly.

"That's no answer."

He flicked a brow.

"I don't even know how to cook it. It's been so long." I rubbed my aching forehead with my chill-blained hands. "I'm really tired, Sarek."

"Then let me."

I sat back and let him. He laid the meat in the rack that we had used to toast nuts, when we had nuts, set it over the fire in the same way, and went about his business. The scent of the meat soon filled the cave, rich and overpowering as no vegetable, no grain based meal, could. After a while, I saw it was cooking unevenly, and flipped the rack, just as we did with nuts.

It was all wrong how he set up the meat, broiling it. I would have been better to cook it in a pot, to save all the juices and fats, rather than have them run into the fire. We couldn't afford the luxury of that waste.

But it was a little late to think of that now.

After a while, it was ready. The fruit sauce was smooth and velvety, for I had taken out some of my stress in beating all the lumps out of it. And the meat was done. I took both off the fire to cool to eating temperature, which didn't take long in our chilly cave. Then I looked over to Sarek, who was methodically splitting the evening's wood into shapes our fireplace could take.

"Dinner is ready."

He looked up, hesitated a moment, then calmly finished the log he'd been working on, and put his tools away. Washed his hands in the stream. And came to sit beside me.

I took a piece of meat, not looking at him. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that he took one too.

It had been long hungry weeks since I had eaten the bird. That had been small, just a few mouthfuls, diluted in a soup. This was entirely different. Rich and thick and dripping with juice and grease. I ate a few mouthfuls and at first my stomach almost rebelled. Out of physical, not just emotional unreadiness. We had been too starved for such a rich meal. We hadn't eaten protein in too long.

I had taken a small piece, but I had to struggle to finish it. Sarek had eaten all his, down to the bone, and tossed the bone in the fire. He eyed the rest, gave me an evaluative look and covering it with a pot lid, moved it to the coolest part of the cave, where it would keep better. He poured us both a cup of the fruit sauce, diluting it with hot water to something more like a drink. I took it from him but still found it easier to look in the fire.

"Amanda. It's not your fault."

That I could almost laugh at. "That much, I do understand."

"You needn't feel such guilt. It was my choice." He sighed a little, staring into the fire. "Under the circumstances, it was the only logical course."

"Somehow I never expect to hear **that** in a practical consideration. Usually you tell me that when I am dead set against something."

"In this instance, it is true."

I stared at the fire. "Sarek. Do you think that with all this snow, we have a chance of going south? Would the snow be enough of a barrier against the toxin?"

"I think it is a great risk."

I turned to him. "Compared to starving to death? Because that's what we're doing. Starving doesn't seem like a risk but an established fact."

"It still, in my opinion, is a less sure death than the other."

"We don't have that many resources here, Sarek. We obviously can't go north. Winter is far worse here than we imagined. We have to move south, if we can. We must. Short of finding some other food source--"

"I understand that. My opinion of the risk of moving south is unchanged."

I sighed and settled back on our bed, fumbling for the tarp that was our blanket. "I can't argue with you. I'm too tired tonight for a long discussion about anything. Or for a story, or a song. Right now, all I want to do is sleep."

"It has been a long day," Sarek agreed, and arranged the cover over me.

I looked up at him. "Aren't you going to sleep?"

"I wish to meditate first."

I frowned suspiciously. "I thought you said this--" I gestured to the fire, our dinner, "was the only logical course? Doesn't that mean no regrets or personal recriminations? Neither one of us has energy for that, Sarek."

"I have …other concerns."

I sighed. "Can't you meditate under the covers? It's awfully cold."

"I won't be long," he said.

"Oh, all right." I turned away from the fire. However long he meditated, I was asleep before he was done.

The meat lasted us three days. The second day we ate it with less revulsion and more appetite. By the third day, we were sorry to see it gone. We hadn't found any more animals laying frozen for the taking, and food was scarce enough that we were splitting up again during the day in search of it. Our snowshoes were holding up, though we sometimes had to do some maintenance on them in the evenings.

Finding my way in the changed white landscape might have been hard for me, but I had spent the last couple of days gleaning by the base of the hill where the hurricane had blown so much brush. I didn't find much, but enough to keep me going back there, and there was so little anywhere else, it seemed my best bet. Sarek, who could find his way regardless of where he was, had been ranging farther afield looking for new food sources. But he was coming back with no more than I did. Then for two days he came back with nothing. I wasn't doing much better.

So I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at what I saw when I returned one afternoon. I heard an odd rhythmic sound even before I came in sight of our shelter. Sarek had our scanty store of tools out and he was making an adjustment to a bow. He had a half dozen arrows, fitted with the feathers from the birds' wings – I had saved them; I saved everything now. To keep them from getting broken they had been in the metal box with our tools, and had survived the hurricane. For the string he had used a finely shaved strip of leather from the dead man's belt, forked in the middle to take the arrow's fletch. As I came into the clearing, he fitted an arrow into the bow, pulled it back and aimed it. The arrow flew cleanly through the air and landed in the fork of a tree. He fitted another and the second landed next to the first.

"Sarek?"

He didn't turn. He went to the tree and carefully pulled the two arrows out, examining their tops for soundness. Then his eyes met mine.

"There isn't enough food, Amanda. If we are going to survive this winter, we have no other option. I will have to hunt."

It was no doubt a particularly painful decision for Sarek. But the fates had another blow in store for us.

There had never been many animals around, and I had never seen any. But Sarek had advantages in his senses – hearing, sight, smell -- that I didn't. I had seen a few tracks, less so, in the winter. Even hunting, there didn't promise to be an abundance of food.

Sarek didn't catch anything the first day. As I had come back with little to nothing, we suffered a lot of hunger pains that night, living mostly on very diluted rose hip tea. The next day he caught an animal. By then we were so hungry, we had few qualms of conscience about eating it. It lasted us another few days. Not that we were eating our fill those days, but at least we had something to eat.

We were walking miles every day searching for food and doing it all at best on five or six hundred calories. Now, often we had less than that. Even with Sarek hunting, our survival was a losing proposition. When I did find a rare stash of food now, like a full nut bush or a laden bramble of hips, we rationed out the food knowing there would be many hungry days ahead, days where we found nothing. One day, I came back with nothing and I only hoped Sarek was more successful. He was already there, meditating into the fire. There was nothing over it, and my hopes for a meal died. But worse was the set of his shoulders. I had never seen him so dejected. He didn't even get up to bar the door.

"Sarek?" I pushed the door closed myself, and fumbled with the bar to secure it. I didn't have the strength. It would have to wait for him.

"We are in trouble, Amanda."

I half laughed at this and stooped to undo my snow shoes, leaning back against the door, like Sarek, almost too tired to stand. "Tell me about it."

It was a rhetorical phrase, but Sarek didn't know that, and took it literally. "Migration."

"What?"

"Amanda, these planetary creatures **migrate**. I cannot think why I didn't realize it, except that it is not a phenomenon indigenous to Vulcan. Those here go south. Those further north come here or at least would have passed through. Have you not realized why the forest is so silent? Why the birds and animals have virtually disappeared? Those here have left, except for a few too weak to make the journey. The ones from the north are dead, poisoned. Those that survived the original bombing obviously couldn't make it in their attempt to migrate through the bombed areas."

I drew a breath. "Oh, no."

"We cannot go north. We can't go south. Nor can we stay here much longer. Even hunting will not provide us with enough food."

"What are we going to do?"

Then Sarek said something I rarely heard from him. "I don't know."

After a dumbfounded moment, I said. "As much as I've twigged you for your overweening pride in always knowing the answer, this is no time to fall short."

"I must consider the problem further."

"Please do," I said, but I felt lost, left at sea. Always at the back of my mind had been that, with Sarek, there was always a solution to almost every problem. Trusting in that hope.

We had nothing to eat, and the dark set in. There was a long night ahead of us. Sarek had tried night hunting a few times. He could see perfectly well in the dark, but the lack of game had convinced him of its uselessness. Now there seemed even less point to it. I sat down next to him and added some of the wood I'd gathered to the fire. At least the warmth was cheerful. I looked at Sarek's furrowed brow and said, "Don't worry about it now. Tomorrow is soon enough."

He looked down at me. "I am sorry, Amanda."

Vulcans never say they're sorry. They regret, on the rare occasions when regret is called for. They make restitution. But apologies are not part of their culture. "Don't," I said quickly. I sat down next to him before the fire. He hadn't even taken off his snow shoes, and I tugged at the bindings.

"It's such a joke," I said, finally freeing one with his eventual help.

"What could possibly be amusing in our circumstances?" He undid his snowshoes and sighing wearily, went to hang them up and bar the door.

"This planet." I went to see if there was anything in the cupboard. It was as bare as old Mother Hubbard's. Apart from a few rose hips, that I had saved to give us hope when 'All was Lost', so to speak, there was nothing. I took one of them, saving the other for breakfast tomorrow. The berries were so astringently bitter, even giving up half of our stash wasn't a strain. "Can you imagine anyone actually fighting over it? What a joke."

"Amanda."

"Well, think of it," I said, half amused, in spite of myself. "We, who never wanted this rock in the first place, ended up with sole possession of it. I know I'd trade my share of this vacation non-delight for a box of cheese crackers and a cup of tea." I dropped the lone berry in a pot of water. "Soup's on in ten minutes, more or less."

"You are incorrigible."

"Come on. What inconsequential food trifle would you trade **your** half for?" I asked. "Perhaps the Federation Undersecretary of Colonization will appear to take us up on our offer. There's no one else around to contest our squatter's claim."

"Let us not do this," Sarek said, shaking his head.

"It doesn't hurt to imagine, does it?"

"Doesn't it? Is it not less difficult to endure hunger when not torturing oneself with thoughts of food?"

"I never thought to hear you actually verbalize that – or any issue with your control," I said thoughtfully.

"I am hungry."

I looked down at my scuffed and battered shoes, suddenly shamefaced. "Sorry. I didn't mean to make things worse for you. With humans, sometimes it does help, to joke about things. Even when they're at their worst."

He was silent for a moment. "Perhaps two boxes of crackers. And a large bowl of plomeek soup."

I made a face. "I **hate** plomeek soup. Nasty stuff."

"Only because you prepare it so ill."

"If I do, then why would you want it now?" I challenged.

"Because--" he hesitated.

"What?"

"Then we would be home," he admitted.

"Oh, Sarek," I held out a hand, and he took it, coming to sit down beside me.

We had little more that night than firelight and each other. It was, almost, enough.

_To be continued…_

_review, review, review..._


	16. Chapter 16

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 16**

When I woke the next morning, it was as if a decision had crystallized in my mind while I was asleep. But when I turned over and opened my eyes, Sarek was gone.

He'd left me a note scratched in the ash of the fire, just a picture of a bow and the sun, at various zeniths, indicating when he left and would be back. I shook my head as I reviewed it. Yes, it was efficient. Yes, it was hard to write lengthy messages in ash. And my chronometer had been a wartime casualty, not surviving the explosion, aircar crash and immersion, so telling me the time he'd return would be a moot point. Even if Sarek knew it to the millisecond, I had no such timesense. But what were we coming to, that more and more, we were losing the trappings of civilization, communicating in hieroglyphs?

He'd built up the fire before he'd left and secured the door to keep from blowing open with a simple contrivance of a vine and a block of wood going through a hole in the wicker as a counterweight. Very Swiss Family Robinson. And it worked, given the wind wasn't high. Normally, that kind of expediency is all that I care about. But it didn't appease me now.

I felt it was time to get back to some sort of civilization. However risky, we had to chance it.

I went around our cave, looking over our possessions. Anything you use daily, particularly in these circumstances, tends to be dear to you, but really, there was surprisingly little that we wouldn't be wearing once we stepped outside. Our one remaining box from the cruiser crash, with a few tools. Our tarp blanket. Our sparking firerocks, since finding new ones under yards of snow might prove difficult.

For all that we had made a home here, we could pick up and leave it at almost a moment's notice and not be too overburdened.

By the time Sarek came back, predictably when the sun was in the position over the horizon that he'd indicated, I had packed up all our possessions into two bundles, one heaver for Sarek to carry. The only thing I brought that we couldn't perhaps gather along the way was some vines for the emergency repair of our snowshoes, with the vines wrapped around a bundle of the dried grass we used for bedding. Dried grass would be hard to find just now. Though perhaps leaves and such might be found blown into whatever shelter we chose. And while there were vines around in plenty, when you need to fix your snowshoes, you can't be wading around looking for them.

The bundle was bulky but not heavy to carry. I felt silly enough taking a bundle of grass and vines that I assigned it to me. Sarek perhaps might have argued we could sleep on the ground, but the grass would also be useful for tinder. Until we got ourselves established where ever we were going, we'd be better off bringing tinder for the first few nights, until we got a new shelter and had collected tinder to dry by a new fire.

Then I realized it was silly to carry anything. We'd take the door off the cave wall, add some vines to it, and use it as a sledge. It wasn't that heavy to drag, though too heavy to carry. And if we decided it was too heavy, we could bundle everything but it into backpacks.

One of the things I found in reviewing our supplies was the weapon. I'd forgotten it, and it was interesting but predictable that Sarek had eschewed it in his hunting. When Vulcans go back to nature, they go all the way. It didn't have much of a charge and wouldn't be useful for long term hunting anyway, but it did have infrared sights. Perhaps that was useless for Sarek, since Vulcans can see well into the infrared band without artificial means. I clipped the weapon to my hip, just in case we saw an antelope or bison or something large and meaty. Not that we had seen anything like so far.

Because I had decided we were leaving.

It was going to be hard to leave our cave – with its never frozen trickle of water and its convenient hole in the roof that we'd carefully walled up with stones into a real fireplace with a convenient cooking hearth. But shelter was useless without food. Food having run out here, it was time to try our luck somewhere else.

Sarek came back with nothing as both he and I could have predicted. He thought the idea of leaving was madness. But then, so was survival at all on this planet.

"It's going to snow," he warned me, in a last trump card argument.

"You're telling me lies," I said, going out to look at the sky which was a perfect cerulean blue.

"It is going to snow," he insisted.

"Then we'd better get going," I said, as stubborn as he.

For a long moment, he stared at me. "The trip will be very hard," he warned me. "The odds of our freezing to death--"

"I don't want to hear them," I said. "Anyway, it can't compare much adversely to the odds of our starving to death, can it? Aren't we already doing that?"

He drew a long breath, staring at me. "So long as you are sure," he finally said. Which made me pretty certain that he'd held off at least in part because the odds being so bad either way, he had factored my comfort, and perhaps his, into the decision not to leave up till now. Relatively warm but hungry? Or to take a remote chance of food, but with an equal chance you'd freeze to death before you ever found it? No doubt the unenviable choice would make even a Vulcan pause.

Sarek agreed with me on one thing. He took the door off the cave and we pulled it as a sledge. We headed off south back the way we had first come that long ago day in summer.

We weren't dressed for cold weather, other than our tarp tunics, with fur mittens and earmuffs, courtesy of the two pelts. Sarek had the remainder of the pelt for a scarf. I didn't need one – one good thing about my long hair, was that it made a nice scarf on its own. Though it was as dirty as I was, there was the comforting thought that the dirt might add some warmth. I cast an anxious glance at the sky, with Sarek's prediction of snow, but it was still a clear clean blue. The wind, our worst enemy, was calm. It was as good as any winter day for a long walk.

We didn't have a lot of options as to where to go. So we headed first for the muddy boot print cave. It was several hours away, at least in summer walking terms. It had a deep shelter. We might find some food there. Sarek knew where it was, how to find it in the changed landscape, how long it might take to get there.

Walking in summer is not at all the same as walking in winter, with snowshoes, pulling a sledge that must have got heavier with every mile. I offered to help, but he wouldn't let me.

When we gather we walk too, of course. But we pause a lot, digging, reaching, ferreting around. This was just walking. We tried to stick to the forest, because it offered more chance of handy food than the grasslands, but it was harder to pull the sledge there too. And it was colder, out of the sun. After an hour of steady walking, my legs were on fire. After two, my feet and fingers, cheeks and nose were frozen. I understood why Sarek had cautioned against coming, but it was too late then. We had to keep moving, to reach some sort of shelter and build a fire before nightfall.

We did get lucky. On one side of a rocky outcropping, which had been sheltered from the hurricane and subsequent snow, we found some nuts. Some on a bush, some on the ground. Most of them not nearly rotten. Back in the summer, it might have been half a meal, but now, when we had learned how to ration, it might give us a little food for two or three days. Since we hadn't eaten in that long, it looked like a feast. But we didn't stop to eat them. It was already mid-afternoon and shelter was hours of hard walking away.

When we reached the halfway point, Sarek did declare a halt and a rest. I was afraid to stop. I was tired enough that I could just keep one foot walking before the other, but was afraid if I stopped, and stiffened I might never get up again. But Sarek insisted. We sat down on some cold rocks. Sarek chipped ice away from a stream, undid his pack to get a cup, brought me some water and even drank a few mouthfuls himself. Cold weather is dehydrating even to Vulcans.

It turned out he had an ulterior motive in mind. He wanted to veer off our path to the site of the cruiser crash. It would take us an hour out of our way, at a time of the year when camping outside was both risky and being caught outside in a storm a virtual death sentence. But he was curious to see his transmitter and how it had fared. I had thought that might be obvious, but he wanted to go. Sarek rarely wants anything for himself badly enough to argue strenuously for it. I suspected he would have tried to go on his own, but for the promise I exacted from him after his last scouting trip not to leave me again. So though I had very little desire to go back to that place, which I knew had no food even when we left it before the start of winter, I finally, reluctantly, agreed.

We'd been walking south-southwest, now we shifted to the east. I was tired and cold and the unpleasant destination made me dispirited. But at last we came to the treeless field where the cruiser had broken up.

With little to block the wind, everything mobile had been swept away even more cleanly than it had in our forest area, including our metal panel hut. I hadn't expected anything else. The part of the ship's hull that we had put the transmitter in was heavy enough to still be there. All the power equipment had disappeared, blown away. The reed and mud packed door was damaged, but had survived a good portion of the wind before being broken up and blown inside. Inside was what you might have expected. The opening had been flush with the direction of the wind, otherwise the door would have been picked up and carried away, but plenty of debris had made their way in. Everything had been pushed around and soaked and then frozen. Icicles hung everywhere.

While he looked at the mess, I looked around for somewhere we could sleep. It was pretty obvious to me that we'd have to spend the night here. It was the only possible shelter, though it was a terrible one. I didn't see how we could have a fire inside it, the fire would have to be outside and it would radiate little warmth to us, though it might possibly keep us from freezing. In the meantime, though, we'd need a place that had been cleared of snow and debris enough to lay our heads.

The knocked over table had made a windbreak of sorts, and behind it was a section of hull that wasn't too bad. The snow and ice inside had frozen there too, and I soon discovered it wouldn't brush or push away, so this would have to be it.

"Sarek, if you put the sledge here, I can put our bundle of bedding on top of it. I don't think we can manage a fire inside, but between the table and the parts of the door shielding us, and the tarp over and under us, I think we can survive the night."

He looked down at me from the bits of equipment he'd been salvaging. "What?" he asked.

That was an expression Sarek rarely used, given he could play back almost any statement, even one he hadn't initially attended to. I opened my mouth and drew a breath, but then just stared at him, and the bits of equipment he'd gathered. And suddenly realized what he was doing, what had made him concentrate so deeply he had not attended me. "You can't be thinking you're going to repair that?"

"It may be possible--"

"What good will it possibly do? If anyone heard it initially, they would have come!"

"This area has been through a war--"

"I know that! I lived through it, remember? And I'd like to keep on living, though at the moment, I'm not quite sure why. Which means food and fuel and a place to keep warm." I drew a breath and calmed down. "I appreciate that you were curious. We'll, you've seen what we could have expected. Nothing could have survived that hurricane. Building the transmitter in the first place was a nice try. Maybe it did work, back then. But there was no one around to hear it. And there isn't anyone around now. Except us. And we can't stay here, not even long enough to fix it, if it can be fixed. There's no food here."

"We must stay here."

The words, the tone in which he said it, determined, inexorable, was like a body blow. I put my face in my hands and just sank down.

"The components for the transmitter are all here. They were blown inside. It won't take me long to reassemble them."

I was shaking my head, but I had no strength to argue.

"You do what you like," I said, finally. "I'm just not sure how much I'm going to be able to do."

He didn't argue with me, either.

As bad a shape as Sarek was in, a truly scientific problem energized him as nothing else could. But for me, it was harder. I hadn't liked our first sojourn here. To be back here, knowing there was no food out there, totally dispirited me. We ate the nuts we first gathered, not even bothering to toast them. Sarek worked with a fire at his back. I huddled in the tarp and only went out for fuel and to relieve myself. I didn't see any food then and after months here, I knew there was none to be had. I didn't bother to exert myself looking for what I knew very well wasn't to be found. This was not where I had planned to be.

Sarek, caught up in his work, was nearly oblivious. I appreciated that he only had so much energy too. We didn't argue.

It did snow, and that added to our misery. While I was fuel gathering, I paddled in my snow shoes over a drift that I thought was covering solid ground, but it was over a mass of vines and leaves piled up by the hurricane. Unbalanced by the wood I was carrying, and by my awkward snowshoes, I couldn't recover myself when the ground gave way beneath me. I tumbled down headfirst, my yelp muffled by snow. One leg hung up over the edge by the vines and my snowshoe. The wrench was so painful it stunned me, and for long, long minutes I couldn't move. And then, I got warm and comfortable and almost didn't want to. Hypothermia, I realized dazedly. I had to force myself to stir, to call for Sarek, to hope he heard me.

He did hear me. He got me out. It said much for how bad his condition was that he didn't carry me back. He put an arm around me and I limped and winced my way back to the shelter. Now it didn't matter whether I wanted to forage -- or leave -- or not. I couldn't.

Sarek finally fixed his transmitter, or thought he had. He only salvaged the solar panel, but he thought it might still sometimes work. He found one of our stone tablets, both markings now gone, and scratched a new message in, this time with a sharp stone.

I still could barely walk, but our situation was critical now. We had to move, or find food, or starve where we were. On a day that promised sun, we started off south again. When I got too tired to walk, when I hurt too much, Sarek pulled me on the sledge. It was so hard for me to see him do it, that alone made me walk when I otherwise could not have.

Half way to the muddy bootprint cave, the wind picked up and began to flail us. We closed our eyes and leaned into it. It took us all day to walk what we had formerly done in a few hours. Every step was a struggle. Several times one or the other of us went down, and there were times I was sure we wouldn't make it. It would have been so easy to stop, to lie down, and let the blessed warmth of hypothermia overtake us. But at least there were two of us, and when one flagged, there was the other to exhort.

We did make it.

This cave started as a rocky outcropping that went deeper underground. Deeper was actually warmer, and there was less debris and snow underground. But it was dark. I didn't really care at this point. There were bigger bogeymen here than simple darkness. We pulled the sledge all the way down in the cave and wrapped ourselves in our tarp and bedding, piling it on top of the sledge for extra insulation from the ground. And we both slept at least the clock around.

Hunger drove me awake, even more than cold. Next to me Sarek was still sleeping. He'd gone from stocky, to thin, to now truly skeletal, and I thought if we ever got out of this I'd never, never tease him about his appetite ever again.

I scratched him a note in the dirt, no longer chary about such expediencies, and went out to take care of certain necessary functions and see what I could find.

Outside the woods were quiet. For a moment, I just stood, surveying the area. No birds, no sounds. I broke some surface ice, and got a drink from a stream, which helped. A few feet down in the water, I saw a patch of green that I knew was cress. The thought of going in that icy water was horrible, but hunger was stronger. I broke the ice with rocks and sticks, and shucked off my snowshoes and clothes, unwilling for them to get wet, and went naked into the frigid water. It was so shocking, I could hardly bear it, but hunger was stronger even than that, and I stayed in long enough to ruthlessly pull up the patch of cress and throw it on the bank. It was ice covered before I got out. Once out I gathered my clothes and without even stopping to put anything on, ran back in the cave, the cold anesthetizing the pain that it would have otherwise caused me.

At least I had a bath. I had been more than a little ripe.

Sarek woke at my noisy approach, and his brows rose to his bangs as he saw me coming in my state of undress. I was shivering too hard to talk, and just dove under the bedding tarp, but he saw the bunch of cress and that was explanation enough. It said a lot for Vulcan control that he didn't fall on it immediately, while I shivered helplessly, but went to find wood and scout a place for a fire.

He finally found where there was a natural crevice in the stone, to make an all important vent. We could build a stone chimney and hearth to direct the smoke upwards, if we had to stay. It wasn't for aesthetics but to save us from carbon monoxide poisoning. We built a fire, sacrificing some of our bedding for tinder, and then sat around it and stuffed our mouths with cress. No salad ever tasted so good.

It gave us heart and a fragile thread of hope, when hope was nearly gone.

At least we had a shelter again, in a place we hadn't lived and gleaned in for months. We had wood at our doorstep. In this forest area, many branches and trees had come down in the storm, and there were lots to be gathered that was dry and small enough that it didn't have to be painstakingly split. I gathered tinder and looked for windbreaks where I might find dry patches of bedding grass, for when we pushed on again.

There wasn't really food, not in any quantity, though we periodically found enough to keep us alive for a few more days. We didn't intend to stay here. Our hope was to regroup, regather some critical supplies, and then find a way to push even more south. Surely if we went south enough, we'd outrun winter.

To outrun winter. That had become a dream of mine.

We stayed a few days, and then moved on. We always foraged south, looking not just for food, but for the next link in our journey. Whenever we came across a small rocky outcropping, not necessarily much, but enough of a shelter to keep us warm in snow, we'd move on. After a few days we found one an hour and a half in the direction we wanted to go.

So we relocated there. And then began looking for the next likely shelter to move to.

A good plan, except that we grew progressively weaker.

It snowed more. The wind blew. We no longer told stories or sang when dark closed in. We hardly spoke, except when required to, to make a decision or discuss when to move on. We gathered our fuel and what little food we could scavenge around our fire, huddled in our makeshift shelters and slept.

In two weeks we had moved down along the big river, where we had first crashed. It was bigger than I remembered. The current strong, white capped and ominous. There were fish in this river, I remembered from our first near drowning, having seen them in the water. Then Sarek would have never conceded to our eating fish. Now, I spent two bitterly cold, painful days trying to catch one, and finally succeeded. Although I was so hungry, I could have eaten it raw – sushi wasn't out of the ordinary for humans -- I brought it back to Sarek. He didn't argue about my catching the fish. But he did his taste test, while I waited, anxiously shifting from foot to foot, and then, eyes closed, pronounced it poisonous to us. As so many things on this planet turned out to be.

It was a cruel blow, and I could see from the set of his shoulders Sarek was as dejected about it as I was. And I had to turn away, or I'd start to cry.

We were nearly at our limit.

Sarek still went hunting every morning and carried the bow across his back even when he went to get wood, though he realized that the animals that he usually caught never were abroad after morning. For a while he had taken the blaster too, but he was just as accurate with a bow. The infrared sight did nothing for him. So he left the blaster in the cave. For a while I carried it, then as starvation set in and every ounce took energy to carry that I didn't have, I left it too. Weapons like that had no place in our survival.

Sarek got lucky one morning. We had left the cave together, and I'd walked along with him a little way, to a place I hoped to forage. A creature had burst out of the snow right in front of our path, when neither of us had expected it and the noise of our passage had probably masked the small sounds it made even to Sarek's sharp ears. Yet his reaction was instinctive. He pulled the bow and arrow from his back and shot it in one pure reflexive motion that was as beautiful as any ballet. It was one of the badger like animals. With it, we had food for another few days. We brought it back to the cave, prepared it and ate it, till we were full. And thought, under those circumstances, with a full belly and food to spare, it was time to move on again.

And so we pressed more south.

Until we hit the edge of one of the bombed out areas. You could tell it instantly. The devastation was obvious, even before you got near it. You could smell the death, even in winter. Sarek halted a good five miles away, afraid of the toxin fallout, and said we could not go further.

We wouldn't go west, into the river. We could only then go east. But it would be a long trek east to get around the bombing if we could do that. We still had some meat left, and I'd gotten good at boiling bones into soup, though there wasn't much else in the soup. Before we could start moving east, Sarek reported that it was going to snow again. How his senses included a barometer, I'll never know. Probably something to do with finding rain and water on his desert world, but it came in handy. We found ourselves a better shelter, one that we could have a fire inside, did our best to lay up wood and some food to tide us over. And then the blizzard hit.

It snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed, for days. We ran out of food. We rationed wood. And still it snowed.

By the time the blizzard was over there was a good three feet outside. We had to dig our way out of the cave. The prospect of finding even wood was nearly impossible.

Then the wind came again. It scoured the snow, drove it into drifts as high as a two story building, but left some of the forest relatively clear. In lulls between the violent windstorms, we scurried around gathering wood and I stumbled across a honey nest, left half concealed in a snowdrift that the wind had scoured in it's capricious sculpting of the landscape, from bare earth to twelve foot high drifts. The honey and the insects inside were frozen. These insects, at least, weren't poisonous. Before they thawed out, we ate them, the honey and the comb too. We would have eaten the paper lantern of the hive if it had been edible. The honey was gone all too soon. We were having trouble rationing our food. Even the grass of our bedding was starting to look good to me. I'd developed a habit of chewing my fingernails. It was getting hard even to think, we were so dizzy from hunger.

But still, we went on. One morning, Sarek was off hunting as usual; I was prospecting for cress by the bank of the river, because it was something I could often find. Even if it had few calories, it was something to fill our stomachs. Bending over, head down, to shuck off my snowshoes, preparing to go in the water, I had to sit down, because I suddenly felt too dizzy to stand. And I knew we had run almost out of luck. When we were too weak to gather, we would starve.

Since I couldn't stand, I sank down on the bank to undo my snowshoes from that position, disconsolate, facing that horrible, inevitable fact. Starvation, real this time, not just pinched stomachs and lost weight but the real, final, fatal thing. I had so long refused to accept it, but now it seemed unavoidable. Sarek had known it for awhile. It accounted for his silence. Perhaps he'd known it from the beginning, perhaps that's why he'd been so insistent on his transmitter. It explained everything I'd seen and tried not to see in his behavior. I was just too stupid, or too stubborn, or too humanly blind, to admit the facts that he'd been squarely facing for weeks. Had all our efforts, all my insistence, only prolonged our misery? Would we have been happier back in our favorite shelter, even if we lasted a little less long?

But I had had a reason to hope in my stubbornness. A fragment of memory, from a book.

Like many girls, I'd taken dance, ballet. Being a bookworm as well I had read the histories of the great choreographers and dancers. One who urged his dancers, when they were training hours a day, and dancing on stage at night, never to eat. In the biography of one of them, she related how she used to live on an apple a day, and the master had chided her even for that. He hadn't said, 'eat sensibly'. He had said, 'eat nothing'.

At the time, in an age where such things were better understood, I had thought it was supremely stupid on both their parts. But walking hours every day, eating little more than that dancer, the memory had come back. It was an image I clung to. We were pretty much eating no more calories than that. If they could do it and dance so beautifully, we could do it and survive. And there had to be beauty in that.

There had been beauty in Sarek's swift kill. There was even beauty in our struggle to survive. The faith we had in each other. The wind in the trees. The snow in the air. The clouds in the blue sky. And us, going out daily in all of it, in our forage dance. Fighting against all odds.

None of this might be logical, but it had a kind of beauty to it. Dirty and ragged as we ourselves were.

It galvanized me now, to keep searching to find that one small bit of food a day. To survive. To dance again. Against all odds.

With a waving patch of cress visible from the corner of my eye, and with the habit of life still strong in me, in spite of what I had so recently acknowledged, I automatically slid off the bank, flinching at the chill water, uncaring about my clothes, not sure if I could get them off without fainting anyway, when just undoing the snowshoes had been almost too much. When I got back to the cave, I'd dry my clothes before the fire. I slogged over to the weeds. The water was too deep and I was too far out to throw the food on the bank, so I stuffed as much as I could into my tunic, grateful I had it on to serve as a sling. When I couldn't fit any more in, there was only a small patch of weed left. Loathe to leave it, I broke my latest rule of bringing all food back to share, and instead crammed the handfuls into my mouth, chewing and swallowing automatically, ignoring the taste of grit on my teeth, thinking only of eating as fast as possible and getting out of the freezing river.

I was reaching down for another tuft, when chunks of ice flew past me. If the river froze hard, there'd be no cress to get. I wouldn't dare go under thick ice that I couldn't break. Soon there wouldn't even be that left to eat. I closed my eyes on that bitter thought and with renewed determination scrabbled with my bare toes and my searching hands to get every last scrap. My feet and hands were hard as horns now, from months of walking and gathering. I didn't feel the sharp rocks, as my toes gripped and my hands scrabbled. It was important to get all of it. Perhaps this was the last food we'd have. Perhaps it was the last thing I'd ever eat. I pulled and ate methodically, staring unseeing at the water, when another swirling chunk of ice floating past finally registered on me. And I stopped in mid chew.

I was getting numb, getting that warm, hypothermic feeling. It was past time to get out. If I was going to get out at all.

But seeing the chunks of ice drift past galvanized me. They were moving south.

Floating south.

True, we couldn't **walk** past the bombed out, poisoned areas. In that respect we were trapped here. But couldn't we float? If we built a raft, took it down river, wouldn't it have to, _eventually_, take us past the bombed sections? We wouldn't have to touch the poisoned earth. We wouldn't have to march for miles and miles without food in our starved state, with nothing around us that was safe to eat, breathing up the toxic matter kicked up by our feet, or trying to march while drinking water poisoned by toxic effluent. Sarek had convinced me that way was impossible.

But we could just **float**, couldn't we? The river was fast running. It would take us further in hours than we could walk in days. It was wide enough that we could traverse the Bad Lands painlessly. How ridiculously simple and obvious. To a human. To a less blind and stupid human than I was myself, too used to a genius Vulcan husband to get her out of everything. Had I lived on Vulcan too long to share some of that water-starved blindness and prejudice? Why hadn't I thought of a raft earlier?

Not that there weren't risks. We didn't know if the river was navigable. If it had rapids or falls, if it would stall or strand us in one of the bad lands. If it would take us anywhere safe. But right now, facing sure starvation, an unknown possibility of life was better than a sure chance of death.

No, Sarek wouldn't have thought of this, coming from a desert planet. Having no cultural preconceptions of water travel. Sarek could barely swim. He well remembered his first disastrous experience with it. He never went near the river if he could help it, regarded it as nothing more than an insurmountable barrier. But I knew better. I should have thought of this, weeks, months ago. Still, there was time. It wouldn't take us long to build a raft. We had wood and twine in plenty. Sarek could swim, even though just barely. If we hit rapids, if the raft capsized, I knew he was determined enough to get back to it. We'd get where we needed to go.

And now was the time to do it. Perhaps in a few more weeks, the river here would freeze. Perhaps it was why we had come now. Because it was time and we had to go.

It was risky. It was dangerous. But it was a manageable risk. And it held a real possibility of survival, much better than our alternatives.

For the first time in weeks, I felt hope. We could be out of this place in days. Perhaps settled in a more prosperous area. And if we stayed by the river, and kept drifting south as far as it took us? We could follow the river. Glean an area and move on, glean and move on, as long as the winter lasted.

We could live on the river.

Alive.

Till we outran winter. Outran winter. The thought was heady.

Survival, so recently despaired of, suddenly seemed possible.

In the moments this had occurred to me, I'd frozen nearly solid. I scrambled to grab the final few weeds, stuffed them into my mouth without hardly washing the dirt off the roots. The lure of food still imperative, I tried to swallow them without hardly chewing them, so eager was I to get back to Sarek and tell him the amazing news. That there was hope. A way out. A way to life. That we weren't going to die.

I struggled on my frozen feet, shuddering badly, to get back to the bank. Suddenly it seemed awfully far away. I took a step and went to my knees. I pushed myself up, feeling dizzy and weak again. I worked on chewing the mouthful of cress, hoping it would give me strength, trying to force my feet to move.

The water was rushing and splashing around me, and my head was bent down, almost in the water as I fought to rise, so I didn't hear the sound on the river bank. And I was so cold, with the nightmare warmth of hypothermia hovering over my shivering body like a pink haze, begging me to yield to it. And yet I had to move, had to get back, to tell Sarek. We still had a chance.

I barely reacted to the calls from the bank, so locked in my internal struggle. Until a strange voice, shouting, "She's here!" finally registered over the rush of water.

I looked up, stupefied, my mouth still full of that mouthful of half chewed weeds, staring blankly at the sight of strange men in uniforms. I was so unused to seeing anyone but Sarek they didn't really register. They might have been unicorns or dragons for all that. I wasn't sure it wasn't some sort of hypothermic dream. I halted where I was, dumbfounded.

That was the worst thing I could have done. In that water temperature, I'd already overstayed to where I was past the danger point. The warmth of hypothermia finally overwhelmed me. I took one more dizzying step, away rather than toward the bank, away from the strangers, and their danger. And then went to my knees again, my arms wrapped around myself, not for warmth, for I was suddenly overwhelmed with warmth as hypothermia claimed me, but to protectively hug that bundle of cress.

Sarek would need it.

_To be continued…_


	17. Chapter 17

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 17**

Hypothermia is one thing. Drowning in icy water is another. I might have peacefully slid into the warm pink cloud of the former, had I been falling into fluffy snow. But when I went face first into the river, and I breathed its icy water into my mouth and nose, I choked and woke up in a hurry. That was perhaps what saved me.

I reared up from my knees, where I'd gone down, and spit out the dirty river water and half chewed mouthful of cress, coughing and choking, and spitting and sneezing, and thinking I finally understood how Sarek felt when he'd almost drowned. I was so caught up in my own personal fight for oxygen, and in making my knees and feet flail in my effort to get up and clear my lungs, that I didn't notice that the figures on the bank hadn't vanished into the same pink haze, or turned into Cheshire cats or become anything else but what they were. Men. Still waving arms and shouting.

I got up on my feet and stared at them. After the last violent encounter with a stranger, I felt more cautious than anything else.

They were blocking my way to the bank.

A Hard Faced man stood directly in front of me. I almost reached for my hip, but there was no blaster there. I thought belatedly and wistfully of the weapon that I had left in the cave. My mistaken thought that I'd never need it again. My hand clenched and my finger twitched on a non-existent trigger.

"Come out of there, ma'am," Hard Face said, doing a reflexive jerk and abort at my telltale hand motion, his eyes narrowing when he confirmed my hand held no weapon. "This can't be her," he muttered to his companion.

"Got to be." Another punier man, little more than a boy, was turning in a circle and staring at a device on his hip. "No one else around. No one stirring up readings, anyway."

"**She** wasn't stirring up readings until she popped her head above water. Who knows? There could be dozens in that river."

I was shivering violently. Their conversation was in English, but it still didn't make sense to me. I had to get out before I couldn't feel my feet at all. But I was unsure what I was going to walk into. There were only two of them. But that was two too many people for me to process after months of isolation. I had not forgotten what had happened with the last stranger. All I wanted was for them to move out of my way. Please. But I didn't think they'd listen. Even if I said it nicely.

But both men had weapons on their hips and they weren't moving.

Now, I'd bet Sarek against two humans without hesitation, if he hadn't been on a months long starvation diet. Even with two men wearing blasters, I'd give him a good chance. But Sarek was probably not very close at hand, and I wasn't sure he could take even one of them. Not in his present condition.

And neither of them looked all that friendly.

"Come out of the water, Ma'am," the Hard Faced officer said again, still immobile on the bank, clearly reluctant to go further into the water himself. "**Don't** make me come in after you."

"I have to go," I told them, still thinking of them more as obstacles than deliverers. I was still frantic to get to Sarek, to tell him the news. Reluctant to tell them about Sarek in case they were as unfriendly as they looked. I was lightheaded from hunger and exposure and hypothermia. Yes, I had trouble processing that a rescue we'd despaired of ever happening had perhaps finally, belatedly, come. They didn't look much like rescuers.

"You come out right now." the first one threatened. "Right now." I finally came forward, since the choice was between that and freezing solid. My feet were so numb I slipped and fell on the bank, tumbling back into the water, my head going under again. He reached out then and pulled me out but swore in distaste for the muddy water I inadvertently splashed that soaked his immaculate outfit.

"Damn, a class B uniform just ruined," he muttered under his breath. "An extra recycling charge. And hell to pay from the lieutenant when I report in. And all for these damn savages, not a one of them worth saving."

"I tell you, it's **her**," the weedy one said. "She's no colonial. She's **human**."

"She's a hostile. She reached for a gun. I saw it."

The other pointed, presumably to a reading to his device. "I told you she's got no gun."

"She reached for one," the other insisted. "It must have fallen off in the water."

"No scan of a gun. But it's her, I tell you."

"Well, that's for the lieutenant to decide," the first said with some satisfaction, looking down at where I sat on the bank, dripping and slowly solidifying into an ice cube. "But I'll bet you a laundry bill **she's** never been to Earth."

"Harvard, class of 2226," I corrected, my head going back and forth between this conversation, like a spectator at a tennis match. "And they haven't accepted a non-human yet. I ought to know. I was on the alumni committee that fought to widen the admissions requirements. In another life. Unfortunately, I was in the minority on **that** subject."

"See? It's her," Weed proclaimed.

"She still looks like a savage to me," said Hard Face.

"Amanda Grayson, Ph.D.," I said, now shivering violently. "Nobel Laureate. Zi Magni. Twice." I added, through chattering teeth. "And at times, yes, a savage. When I can't get to a hairbrush. "But," I rubbed my freezing arms with my icy hands, "I **do** know how to introduce myself. And on that subject, who the hell are you two, anyway? And what are you doing on my planet? And would you please get out of my way so I can go home and get warm? I've got dinner to make."

"Your planet?" Hard Face asked, rearing back suspiciously.

"I claim this land for Spain," I said, trying to stand up, and nearly fell back into the river. I tripped over the frozen blocks that my feet had become and then had to sit back down abruptly. "Or maybe it's for Vulcan."

"See, I told you it's her!"

"What do you know about Vulcan?" Hard Face asked suspiciously.

"Too much. But I honestly can't remember," I said wearily. I had given up trying to rise and thought I might as well freeze where I sat. "And I'm sort of sick of **this** place too. I wouldn't wish it on an enemy, much less Vulcan. I don't know if it was Sarek or I who first stepped foot on this loathsome rock. But either one of us has certainly been here longer than either of you two. I can tell by your clothes. And the fact that you look like you've had a recent meal." I looked over at Weedy. "At least one of you."

"She doesn't even make sense."

"So my husband often tells me." I pillowed my head on my arms. The pink haze was beckoning and it seemed this was all a dream.

"Don't mind him, Ma'am," Weedy began earnestly, but was interrupted by his granite companion.

"You don't need to apologize for **me**, Hendrickson," Hard Face said. "You science types may stick together, but remember, only **Command** ends up on the bridge."

"This is all very fascinating," I said, feeling lightheaded and wishing they would shut up. If I could just go to sleep perhaps they'd be gone when I woke. "And somewhat amusing. But I have places to go. And someone to see."

"What someone?"

"You have to come with us, Ma'am."

"Are you real?" I asked suspiciously. "Or am I just hallucinating? I'm not going anywhere with someone who isn't real. And I tend to think you're not," I skewered Hard Face with a glance. "**You** certainly can't be for real."

He bridled at that. "Just come along, Ma'am, and we'll see what the Lieutenant has to say."

I dug my heels in. I didn't so much refuse to rise as couldn't. "Who **are** you, actually?" I asked between clenched and chattering teeth. "Besides a figment of my imagination. Tweedledum and Tweedledee?"

"We're from the _Wasp_, Ma'am," Weedy said. "I'm Bio Technician Second Class Stewart Hendrickson. I've read your books, Ma'am. He's Ensign Landar Willis."

"The Wasp?" I asked. "A Federation ship?"

"We're doing advance reconnaissance, under contract," Hard Face proclaimed. "We are securing this planet. And that's all **you** need to know until the Lieutenant clears you."

"It needs secured," I said. "It's the most insecure planet I've ever had the misfortune to be on. I rock it to sleep every night, but the winds still howl all night long."

"She's crazy."

"So my husband often says. Well, not in those **exact** words. But he shares the same opinion, I'm sure."

"It's got to be her," Weedy said. "I tell you, I've seen her picture. And I even heard her lecture, once. By subspace net."

"In better days. I holo much better than I look right now," I said.

"It's not for me to say who she might be," Willis said officiously. "The Lieutenant can decide."

"You're from the Federation," I said slowly, my frozen mind coming slowly around to this fact. "You're real."

"Yes."

"You actually have a ship?" I insisted, finally fastening on this fact. "One that works? It goes up as well as crashes down?"

"We have a shuttle here, Ma'am."

"You actually have a ship." I marveled. "A working ship! Then you have to find my husband," I said urgently, the reality finally sinking in, even as I was sinking fast. "Scan for life readings -- A Vulcan. Ambassador Sarek. He shouldn't be far."

"That's what I was trying to tell you, Ma'am. Another team picked him up forty minutes ago," Hendrickson said. "He was very insistent that crews continue the search for you."

"You have him?" I was stunned at this. "You actually **have** him?"

"We would have had you, if you hadn't buried your life sign readings in a freezing river," Willis said. "Mud all over my uniform now, and all this dirt. What the Lieutenant is going to say, I don't want to hear. He's a real Hard Horse."

"I do," I said. "I do want to hear. Take me to him."

I was galvanized now, but I still really couldn't rise. I couldn't walk either. My feet and legs were blocks of ice. They had to drag me, one on either side.

"We didn't think you were alive," Hendrickson continued, as I stumbled along to where they said they had a shuttle. "There were no readings. No one else around here. All the other colonials that survived are further south. But the Lieutenant relayed that the Ambassador said--"

"It's not our fault," Willis said. "Immersed almost completely in the water, as she was. How could we not miss her? The temperature and life sign readings were all off. Not human at all. I still say she isn't a human. Can't be. And now we'll have missed muster, and the skipper will have missed the recon. And we'll all get blamed for it. And it's not **our** fault." His tone was accusatory. "What were you doing in that river?"

I stared up at him, still trying to understand what he was saying. Could Sarek really have been rescued? By these types?

"What were you doing in there?" he said again.

"Picking up takeout," I said blurrily, missed a step in my laborious quest to keep my frozen feet moving, and tripped.

Apparently I wasn't moving fast enough. Hard Face – or Willis-- grew impatient and putting a reluctant arm around me, manhandled me along. Eventually we came to a small squat craft, not much bigger than an aircar, sitting on a level area. He bundled me in, muttering at the water and mud I tracked over the spotless deck plates, and opened a communications panel. "We've got her. At least Hendrickson **thinks** it's her. I have my doubts. We'll rendezvous in 5.3.

And then we lifted off, and skimmed across the surface with jaw dropping speed. The heat came on in the craft, and all my frozen limbs began to thaw out with unbelievable pain. But the view out the port was mesmerizing enough I could almost ignore the pain. Craning my head by the view port, I stared at the huge dark patches marking the destruction of the planet surface. There were several shuttles streaking through orbit, clearly all on the same mission. I saw the big river we had crashed into as it turned on the surface from a mighty torrent to a smaller line to just a wormy wiggle in the landscape. There was good land past the black patches of destruction. Green. Alive.

"We might have made it," I said, reaching out a frozen hand to trace the promising line.

"What?"

"Look, we-" Then the craft lifted above the atmosphere and the sky turned dark and the view of the planet vanished as though it had all been just a bad dream. Or a dark vision.

"She's no human," Willis said, looking askance at me. "Look at her gawk like a native at the view. She's probably never been in a ship before."

"Even if she were a colonist, she had to have done **that**. At least once."

"I say once is all. If the Lieutenant disagrees, you made the call."

"Shut up, Landar."

"I'm up for promotion. I can't afford your mistakes. And I could put you on report for insubordination, Stewie. Remember, I'm your senior."

"Shut up," Hendrickson said to him and then "Sorry, Ma'am," to me.

"God help me," I said, leaning my forehead against the cool surface of the view port. The heat of the craft felt stifling, and all my frozen limbs were on fire. The last ship I had been in had been the _Surak_, which made this little craft look like a peapod. I wondered what her fate had been. It was all too bizarre. "This has to be a hallucination."

But soon we were docking with another craft. Apparently, it wasn't.

All our worries, Sarek and mine. All our struggles trying to get away. And the planet simply vanished behind me in the blink of an eye, in a shuttle piloted presumably by Laurel and Hardy.

That was perhaps unkind. I knew Starfleet was a profession for youngsters. I had a son in it as proof. And the crew on these little contract scout ships were often the least experienced of all. It seemed like there were a lot of ships scouting the surface. It was just luck, good or bad, that I got these two. But it still was the last way I'd imagined I'd be rescued.

Actually, I had sort of given up imagining I'd be rescued. So maybe it was my fault for having such lowered expectations.

The next breath I took was of the warm, ionized, and yes, faintly smelly air of a ship. So used to breathing fresh air, my nose wrinkled inadvertently. The hard unyielding metal of the deck felt odd under my bare feet. They'd been too frozen for me to notice before that I had nothing on them. My shoes and snowshoes were still on the bank, forgotten behind me.

There was an officer in the cycle port of the shuttle deck, presumably the Hard Horse lieutenant, since Laurel and Hardy immediately straightened into military composure. But I didn't make the best first impression on him either.

"My shoes!" I said, as I stepped on the deck plates, interrupting him before he could introduce himself. I was still having trouble shifting from a reality where you only had one pair of shoes, ever, that you had to safeguard, back to a normal life. "I forgot them!"

The nameless officer grimaced, and looked my rags up and down from head to toe. "I'm sure you wouldn't want them any more, Ma'am," he said with studied politeness. He held out a scanner. "Finger and retina prints please."

I stared up at him but he was looking over my head, his nose wrinkled. For the first time I realized what I must look -- and smell -- like.

"Who do you think I am?" I said, testily, but submitted them anyway. "T"Pau of Vulcan?"

"Grayson, Amanda," the computer said primly. "Presumed lost and deceased, Stardate 2253.7"

"'Not wounded, sire, but dead'," I quoted.

Hard Horse lieutenant he might be, but also illiterate. He only wrinkled his brow as well as his nose.

"Only my shoes are lost," I informed him loftily.

"Told you it was her," Weedy said, poking Willis in the ribs. "I win. You cover the laundry chits this month."

"Oh, my god," I said, thinking what my survival had come to -- reckoned up in dirty uniform credits.

"Come along, ma'am. We'll get you some shoes," he said, as if humoring an idiot.

"Not like mine," I said taking umbrage at his superior tone. I took that from Sarek, and Spock, but not from this little tin soldier. But I stepped forward, barefoot.

I actually think of that occasionally. Not Laurel and Hardy, or their Hard Horse boss. But my shoes. Being covered with drifts of leaves, of snow. Wet, freezing. Disintegrating. Trapped there on that planet.

While I was rescued. Alive. I almost felt sorry for them, inanimate objects though they were.

But I was still alone, so far, even on this ship.

"Where's my wandering parakeet?" I demanded, still feeling like it was all a dream and I would blink and wake up on the river bank.

Clearly none of them were acquainted with the greats of literature. Even Weedy looked puzzled.

"I want my husband," I clarified. Right now I was thinking I'd rather be on the planet with him than trapped with this trio.

"Here's not here."

I rounded on the Lieutenant. "What?" I said, outraged. "Take me back down!"

"He's not on the planet," Hard Horse said. "He's already been transferred to the _Lyon_."

I blinked at this, struggling to understand. The heat of the ship felt more stifling than Vulcan had ever been. My feet were on fire, and I longed to sit down. "You fed him to a lion?" I asked.

"We're just a contract ship," Weedy explained, though the Lieutenant bridled at this usurpation of his authority. "The _Lyon's_ a registered Starfleet service cruiser and--"

"Then I have to go to him."

"I'm sure you'd prefer to clean up and --"

"No. I have to go. Right now."

"Oh... send her over in the shuttle then," Hard Horse said. "My authority."

"Why didn't you do that in the first place," I said, exasperated.

"You might have been a native," Ensign Hard Face said coldly. "**He** was a Vulcan. Obviously a Federation citizen. You **look** like one of those renegade colonials."

"So what?" I said, outraged.

"We've no authority to move any colonial to a Fleet vessel," the Lieutenant said, "Our orders are to take them into custody, verify their identity and transfer them to a transport ship that will return them to their planet of origin --"

"Oh, just take me to my husband," I said wearily, my hands over my ears. "It's too soon for me to deal with Federation politics."

"Ensign, shuttle her to the _Lyon_. And then see to the deck and to your uniform. You're a disgrace to the service."

"Told you I'd catch it," Hard Face muttered irritably to me.

I changed to putting my face in my hands and thought for sure I must be dreaming.

Another shuttle ride, where I disgraced the deck by dripping more dirty water. Another docking. I was still not sure if I was dreaming; it all seemed so unreal. But I was shivering so violently now that I had unfrozen that I was pretty sure I was awake. Shock was leaving me, and reaction was setting in. The pain as my frozen limbs unthawed was tremendous.

This ship was larger, a cruiser rather than a corvette. It smelled just as bad, though not, perhaps as bad as I did. But this time the uniforms were recognizably Starfleet. I knew them from my son's – he was still at the Academy for another term, but he had worn something very similar on a training cruise.

Another difference was that these officers, unlike on the contract ship, weren't playing at being military. They were military.

After an interminable wait while the air recycled and the pressure equalized, I stepped onto the shuttle deck and opened my mouth to demand to see Sarek. But I was not military, so of course I was temporarily ignored. A nameless officer was there, the ubiquitous clipboard in his hand, flanked by a few others. He spared me barely a glance and not a greeting.

"Dr. Grayson?" he asked, not me, but Hard Face.

"She scans," the latter said, meaning I suppose my retina prints backed up who I said I was. "Though you'd never tell by--"

"I talk too," I interrupted. "Where is Ambassador Sarek? I want to see him."

I saw their reaction in the new officers as soon as I said the name. Their eyes narrowed and they regarded me darkly. Prejudice against aliens, or was it Sarek's name that so offended?

I looked around at the unrevealing faces. "Where is my husband?"

_To be continued…_


	18. Chapter 18

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 18**

When I asked after Sarek, dark looks shifted between officers. No one met my eye. I was adept enough at reading Terran body language that I knew something was up. Something that no one wanted to tell me. Something bad. Anger and resentment and guilt hung in the air like an odor, competing and overriding all the natural ones. My heart began to beat faster in my chest.

"Is he all right? Where is he? I want to be taken to him right now."

A shift among them. No one wanting to talk. Then the senior reluctantly came forth with, "That's impossible."

I drew a sharp breath. "He's not on this ship? What's happened to him?"

Another look among them. Then the one who had spoken originally gave forth with, "He's here."

I breathed a sigh of relief. If he had been rescued, nothing much could go wrong now. "Then take me to him."

"You'll need to come along with us, Ma'am. The Med Section will see to you--"

"Is that where Sarek is?"

The officer shook his head, ever so slightly, and visibly controlled himself. He stepped up to me and took me by the arm in a firm grip. "Come along now."

I tried to step back. There was no give in the arm holding me. "What aren't you telling me--?"

"I'm not at liberty to discuss the case."

"Case? What case?" I fully expected Sarek would be debriefed by Federation officials, who would want his testimony on the events leading up to the war. But I couldn't believe anyone would hold him responsible. Wars happened, in spite of all efforts for diplomacy. Sarek had a better track record than most in preventing them.

He pulled me forward so abruptly that I stumbled on my unsteady feet. "I have my orders. Someone senior will inform you of whatever you need to know. For now, you are to go the med section." Two other officers flanked me. If it came to the laws of physics I was clearly out of my league. Before I could say more, I was propelled down a short corridor whether I wanted to go or not, and it was becoming a case of walking or being dragged. We soon ended up in a turbolift. I let the side of it prop me up while I tried to catch my breath – I hadn't realized quite how weak I'd gotten, or how slowly I had come to move, to keep from fainting, until I was faced with all these healthy robust people who walked briskly. And I tried to figure out what was going on.

I scoped a glance up at their grim disapproving faces. Now it was no secret that my husband has been no friend to Starfleet. Back when it was just the military arm of Terra and her colonies, he fought to keep it from being the sole military representative of the Federation. Like most non-humans, Sarek believed strongly in the principle of a Federation, not an Empire. Meaning a loose confederation of allied worlds, with each member and species world keeping their own systems' autonomy, legally and, where necessary, militarily.

Most if not all non-humans and even some independent Terran colonies regard the military expansion of Starfleet to be as grasping, power-mad and potentially dangerous as Terra's similarly rampant colonization.

From the Terran/old Federation viewpoint, Terra and her colonies were simply building up their military to protect her expanded territory and colonies from increased Klingon and Romulan threat. And it made perfect sense to them.

From the view of the new, more diversified Federation, it meant an almost exclusively Terran dominated military parking their weapons-heavy starships in orbit around their backyards. You can't help but see how that wouldn't cause some perceptual concerns in a loose alliance like the Federation. Nothing stirred up animosity among the alien members of the Federation more than Terran dominated, weapons heavy starships invading their airspace, and potentially disbanding, outgunning or attacking their own space fleets. It didn't matter if they did or not. It was that they could. Not even colonization raised more comparative hackles than this imbalance of military power in a human dominated Starfleet.

If it wasn't for Sarek and the others who agreed with him, I suspect we'd see Starfleet cruisers patrolling the Eridani system in lieu of Vulcan's own fleet, instead of halting at the system boundaries and politely requesting a parking orbit from Vulcan Space Central. And the same for Tellur, Andor, Rigel and all the other major alien space-faring civilizations. Andor herself had nearly come to war over Fleet encroachment in their vast empire. Three things had stopped a war then. The decimation of the Blue Death -- some Andorians still believe that dread disease was a biological weapon perpetrated by Terra. The diplomatic good will engendered in the subsequent cure by a Terran physician – funded by a Vulcan research grant. And Sarek's diplomatic efforts to broker out Andor's system quadrant more in keeping with their territorial views. But Andor still had no love for Terra, and held a grudging resentment toward Sarek as well for his peace, for they took a fierce joy in a good fight. And they had little regard for the Federation, member that she remained. With Andor, it was a sense of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.

Vulcans understand that philosophy. That was originally part of Surak's peace. In fact, I think if Sarek thought it through, that was part of why his son had decided to enter Starfleet, apart from the science aspects.

In the interests of peace, Sarek had reined back the push to over-fund Starfleet throughout his career, arguing against expanded budgets, arguing for local system autonomy over their sectors of space, and for the right for a system's own spacefleets to have prominence in their own home skies. His views were a serious point of contention for Starfleet, who felt more keenly the threat of Klingon and Romulan incursion. And as the official military arm of the Federation, they felt they ought to have the right of military pre-eminence. Everywhere.

That eminent domain/manifest destiny attitude that so many Terrans held caused contention in every world but Terra and her colonies. The idea Terrans held, that other worlds ought to be grateful that the Federation would come in and protect them. And take over, of course. Since no one could quite trust arcane alien ways to do the job right.

But most of this power struggle happened at high levels in Federation jurisprudence and budgetary committees. Sarek's name, while anathema in certain sectors of Starfleet's Admiralty, was just not that well known among the ranks.

Certainly not at this level, or to this extent. I studied the faces and the rigid, over-military posture and wondered at their lack of civility. But I couldn't understand it.

We arrived onto another deck and the lift doors opened. Another officer was there to meet us, also with no smile of welcome on his face. "This is her," the man who'd taken possession of my arm said. "She's the wife of that Vulcan."

_That Vulcan. _The way he said it, was just short of an oath.

I was so shocked that for a moment, I could hardly speak. The Terran prejudice against aliens was overly prevalent in the Starfleet. I knew that from Spock, who had bad experiences as well as good in Fleet. I'd come to recognize there were two types of officers – the rare kind, usually the younger ones, that truly did want to see a unified Federation, and were open, even excited, at the prospect of a multi-being Federation. And those with the older, traditional view that the Federation was at its best when it was just Terra and her colonies. That nothing good would come of allowing aliens to encroach upon Terra's manifest destiny. That even allowing them a seat at the table, a place on a starship, any say over Terra's own abilities to protect herself, or any encroachment upon Terra's rights to ply the galaxy, even in sectors long settled by alien civilizations, was a danger to Terra herself.

One believed we were stronger together. The other believed that together, Terra could only be weakened. It was a common attitude in Federation politics as well as Fleet. With the dual heritage of our family, it was one we could rarely escape, regardless of where we worked or lived. But I didn't have to like it when I encountered it.

"He's a Federation Ambassador-at-Large," I returned.

That traded look again between them. "We know **that** very well, Ma'am."

Again that puzzling trace of anger and resentment. I did understand that because Sarek was a Vulcan, an alien, many Starfleet officers would give him a wide berth. And me too of course, for my questionable judgment in marrying him. Starfleet officers thought nothing odd about dallying with green Orion woman, but the idea that a human woman, an Earthwoman at that, would marry an alien was something I discovered many Earthmen couldn't stomach. I could usually tell in the first few moments whether they held that view. The way this officer's eyes slid over me, refusing to meet mine said that was part of it. But clearly more going on here.

"Where is my husband now?" I asked.

He didn't meet my eyes. "I can't give out any information regarding the detainee."

My eyebrows rose at that word. "We're not **detainees**. He's a Federation citizen, not a colonist. An Ambassador at Large. Look, who's in charge here? I want to see the Captain."

"The Captain is otherwise engaged. If you'll follow me, Ma'am."

Again it wasn't a request. Again, I was taken firmly in hand. I tried to pull back, but I might as well have been a gnat for all my ability to resist.

We moved from the bowels to the heart of the ship, stepping into a busy corridor with a dizzying array of people, and a rush of air, smells, and warmth. All the activity took me by surprise. It was too much, too fast. All those people, all that noise. I couldn't process it. Before I knew it, things went black before my eyes. I flattened against a bulkhead. It didn't do a very good job of holding me up. Neither did my eyelids, clamping together. Or the hand still clamped like a vise around my arm. Or my nails, digging into my palms. In spite of all of it, I slid halfway down the wall, only just managing, by supreme will, not to faint.

"What the--" the officer said something more, but I couldn't hear over the sudden roaring in my ears.

I didn't reply either, trying not to disturb my tenuous balance between half vertical and horizontal.

There was a lot of gibbering in my ear. But I was past processing it. My tenuous balance shifted. Everything went hazy and black. I didn't catch much of anything more until someone broke a capsule under my nose and my head exploded.

"Whew!" I said, opening my eyes. I was in a sickbay, sitting on a diagnostic bed. The table indicators started bouncing and beeping. An attendant tossed the remains of the capsule in a disposal chute and began running a scanner over me.

"Very anemic," he said to a nurse standing by, not to me. "Hypothermia. Exposure. Shock. Starvation, of course. What's all this," he finally asked me, poking with a finger at the stash of wet vegetation, some of it slipping untidily into my lap that I still had crushed in my tarp tunic.

"Cress." I pulled out the bundle, gathering it together, clutching it from force of habit close to me. "I was bringing it to Sarek."

"Well, you won't need that mess any more." He took it out of my arms and threw it onto an adjacent table. My eyes followed it and I realized what he saw – a bunch of dirty, half decayed weeds, brown and dripping. Still there was a meal there, one Sarek would have been grateful to have. I tried to look around for him, but my view was blocked by a light curtain.

"Where's Sarek?"

I might not have spoken. "Lord, is she wet," the medic suddenly said with distaste, looking at me and the muddy trickle I was creating on the floor as my clothes continued to thaw and drip. "You think they'd have cleaned these colonists up at the receiving ship before they bring them aboard."

"I wasn't a--"

"Nurse, can we get all this mud and water off the decking before someone slips and hurts themselves?" he asked irritably. "She's well enough for a few moments. Let's get her sanibathed and dried off. Then I'll be able to do a full exam."

In spite of all the serious issues that were on my mind, or perhaps because of them, this caught me off guard, and I half laughed, half giggled. It was just too absurd. To have come through a terrorist attack, a war, a planetary poisoning and near destruction, death all around us, bombs falling everywhere, then nearly starving in a planetary winter. And then, finally rescued, have people upset about splashed uniforms, dirty clothes and people slipping on damp decks. I laughed again.

"Are you people for real?" I asked, giggling helplessly.

"There, there," the nurse who had come up said forcefully, perhaps recognizing the beginnings of hysteria. She was darn right, too. "None of that." She punched up an opaque warming and cleansing light and began to strip off my clothes, fingers mincing with distaste of her own.

That did seem real, and it sobered up my incipient hilarity. I didn't appreciate it. They were **my** clothes. That cress was my food. True I was muddy, wet, ragged and more than a little filthy. But my things had been all I had between me and freezing – or staving -- to death for months. And they didn't have any right to them. I watched anxiously, more than a little distressed, as the shabby wet garments were discarded on top of my rejected cress. An orderly came and before I could move to stop him or say anything, carted them away. I put out a hand in half protest, but it was too late. I was outraged. Even if the clothes were ruined, and they were, there was still the cress. It might have looked a bit brown with cold but it was still perfectly good. **Someone** ought to enjoy it. Heck, I'd be happy to eat it, since clearly no one was offering me a steak dinner here. But the nurse struggling to get the worst of the mud off me that the sanilight had missed, drew me back with some murmured indistinct platitude.

"You won't want those things anymore. Old rags and weeds."

I wanted to tell her those old rags had once been a Balencia original evening gown, selected at some care. And those weeds would have been a welcome meal for both me and my husband. But I was more distracted to see my once precious, singular and necessary things carted away and disposed of. Dirty rags, nasty weeds. I didn't want them, did I? Did I?

Even being told I didn't, I still wasn't sure. It would have been nice to have made the decision myself. To have had something in replace of them before I had that decision taken away.

I wondered where Sarek was in all of this. Now that I had nothing else. "Where's my husband?" I asked again, half inclined to get off the table in search of him, sans clothes or not.

"There, there, the doctor will see you now." She gave me a skimpy little gown to don, and went away.

The doctor came back, presumably since I was no longer so offensive to his sensibilities. Though I'm not sure why my state of dirt and wet had mattered, since he only looked over my scan readings. "You've got a broken foot," he told me, as if I didn't know, as if it would be some great revelation to me, as if I hadn't winced from it for months. "It's healed very badly. I can't imagine what you were playing at, not staying off it."

"We were trying to survive."

He looked straight through me, went on as if he hadn't heard. "We'll have to rebreak it and refuse the bones, or it'll continue to give you trouble. You've some other minor conditions, but that's the only one requiring surgery. We'll put you out for that now. When you wake up, it will be good as new."

"I want to see Sarek first."

"You'll have to see him later."

"Is he being treated?"

"I really can't say."

"Look, this is ridiculous. I need to--"

And then he hit me with a hypospray and everything went black again.

For the next few hours, I was out of it. They set my foot and socked me with infused nutrients. When I woke, the ward had the darkened shadows of the later watches.

"Sarek?" I called, still dizzy and disoriented.

A woman appeared out of the shadows. "Just me, Ma'am. It's third watch."

I went through my same reiterated request, checking furtively to see how mobile I was. I might have gotten the same brick wall lack of information, except that the nurse was not nearly so military. And in the clandestine shadows of the half darkened ward, she was inspired to tell me all.

"He's in the **brig**!" I said, shocked and amazed. "In the **brig**?!"

"Shhhhhh!" The nurse said, looking around furtively and then dialing up the air curtain to block sounds as well as sight. She settled down in a stool by my bed. "You'll get me in trouble! Anyway, he's not there now. He's here in sickbay. They were afraid – well he's here. But in restrictive custody."

She then told me the whole story. It was clear she was partly enthralled with what she clearly viewed as the romance of it all, even though she disapproved and was even horrified at parts of it. And like everyone else on the ship was sympathetic to feeling near resentment of us for the consequences to her own officers.

It turned out that when Starfleet had mopped up the war between the two planets, they had come out to see to the colony world. Sarek's transmitter had been working, though perhaps they might have found us anyway. Perhaps not. We were just two people, in an uninhabited decimated section. They'd been concentrating south, where a few settlements had partially escaped the bombing, and they had had their hands full there. A couple of faint life readings in the hemisphere we were in, particularly masked by shielding rocks or rushing water can be easy to miss. But his transmitter had worked, and they found his tablet, and went looking for the more distinctive Vulcan life reading. I suppose they were as surprised to see a Vulcan in furs and a bow as he was to see them. But appearances aside, Sarek had been in full possession of his mental faculties. His rescuers didn't have the confusion in communicating with him that my group and I had experienced,

The officers were very clear that they expected him to return to the ship, that they had particular orders to recover him if he were found still alive. He was equally clear he was pleased to oblige -- when I had been recovered too. He had no intention of abandoning his wife on the planet surface, even for a question of minutes or hours. He insisted he remain until I was recovered. That he accompany those who went to pick me up. They however, disagreed.

Sarek then refused to go. Things got a little tense. Impatient, they tried to hustle him along. Maybe it was that he was Vulcan, an alien. Maybe it was the bow and the furs and the fact that he looked a little wild. At least partly it was because in the equatorial regions of the planet, where some people had survived, the former colonists had turned savage and there had been altercations with the personnel sent to relocate them. Some of the Starfleet representatives had been rushed, some had suffered opportunistic attacks by bands of people who apparently attacked anyone that moved.

Whatever, they were already spooky before they got to Sarek. When he refused to go; when they tried to overpower him and move him along, he resisted. There was a scuffle. One ended up with a neck pinch. Vulcan methods of restraint aren't widely known and the man looked dead. Outraged that Sarek had killed the senior of their party, one raised a phaser against him, and not set on stun.

Too far away to neck pinch him, Sarek shot the phaser out of the man's hand with his bow, deflecting the blast. What would have been a killing beam against Sarek merely destroyed a large tree. The tree crashed down, catching part of the party underneath its branches as it fell. One officer suffered a broken back. In the confusion, the others went for Sarek without restraint. In the brawl that followed, Sarek broke a man's arm, and was himself hit in the head. The neck pinched man began to revive, and the confusion increased, but the panic didn't. When Sarek, still groggy from the head blow, began to stir, he was shot, but this time with a phaser set on stun. They did finally get him off the planet, without me. Near unconscious from a blow to the head, phaser burned, and suffering from other bruises and blows.

I don't know why I didn't realize that he would never have left that world unless I was with him. Silly of me to think he'd trust anyone to retrieve me, or risk having me left behind, stranded, alone. He would simply never do that. I don't think humans would quite understand. But if you were Vulcan, or even a human who had been stranded on this planet for months, who had been through what we'd been through, you would appreciate that he couldn't leave me. That he would need us to go together.

But the repercussions of this altercation had become grave. The neck pinched man had fully revived with little more than a stiff neck, and the first impression that Sarek had murdered the man was soon corrected. But the officers of the ship were shaken and not in a forgiving mood. The man who had been hit by the tree and had his back broken, and the man whose arm Sarek had broken had their bones set and were back on restricted duty. But that wasn't the end of the situation.

Manhandling a Federation Ambassador, and worse, attempted murder against one, were serious crimes. The evidence of that – the phaser set on kill, the blasted tree and smoking ruin of the area, the inadvertent friendly fire casualty of the other officer with the broken back would be damning in any civilian court.

Conversely, striking an officer in the performance of his duty, was to Starfleet sensibilities, something like striking a cop, a capital offense. In a Starfleet court, in an area where Starfleet had claimed martial law, Sarek could have faced a serious sentence. When they threw him in the brig, they had every intention of pressing attempted murder and a host of other charges. When the truth came out about the Vulcan neck pinch, excessive deadly force then was on their side. And unfortunately for them, they discovered a full Federation Ambassador like Sarek has diplomatic immunity. That their interpretation of martial law was iffy. Starfleet may have had no right to use deadly force against him, even if he refused to leave the planet under their orders. On the other hand, in a military situation, diplomatic immunity might not apply. It would be a tricky legal problem to resolve.

Subspace messages went back and forth. Federation officials were horrified to hear that in the course of his so-called rescue, Sarek had been attacked and nearly killed. The Federation and Starfleet went toe to toe on the issue, Starfleet backing up their officers and still determined to howl for his blood. However, given he was seriously injured and debilitated, under pressure from the Federation, Sarek was released from the brig, and put in sickbay under heavy guard. As much for their own safety as his peace of mind, he'd been told I had been rescued and was on the ship.

The nurse couldn't get me in to see him, but mindful as well that I might be as difficult as my husband, she broke her rules enough to take me into the nursing station, where the monitors revealed him. He was green from the phaser burn, and he had a large bruise on the side of his head, but he was breathing, and the monitors showed his injuries were not life threatening.

It was time for me to act. I couldn't betray my nurse informant, but there were other ways. I sidestepped asking for Sarek and instead asked to speak with the Captain. When I was told the Captain was unavailable -- to a lowly person like me was implied -- and I was pawned off on another officer, I merely smiled sweetly, and asked for a subspace link. I had calls to make, I explained, first to the Federation Undersecretary. And then to my near relative in marriage, T'Pau. She was not unknown for having turned down a seat on the Federation High Council, but she was no less a power for all that. There would be many who would want to know we had survived.

That brought the Captain down in a hurry.

It was clear I was a hot potato to him. We had a very frank discussion, in private. I let him know that I was grateful for the rescue, but was concerned and distressed that I had been prevented from seeing my husband, and not happy with that aspect of my treatment from Starfleet. If I wasn't going to get answers from him as to what was going on, I would be happy to ask them of the Federation officials to whom Starfleet – and he – ultimately reported. He could stonewall me, but I would eventually get answers one way or another.

He bridled at that, and told me essentially what the nurse had, freeing me to act, as I couldn't when I was shielding my informant. And I was still indignant enough that my outrage didn't need to be faked, even without the benefit of surprise.

"You put my husband in the brig?!"

He made his case as best he could, but even from him it sounded a little weak.

"Talk about military authority all you like," I said. "But to attack a refuge from a violent war, who was merely trying to ensure his wife was not left behind on a dying world, is indefensible. To try to separate a Vulcan from his wife, to attempt to forcibly remove him from her, to use deadly force against him is a monstrous affront against Vulcan values – something other alien societies would regard as part of a trend to disavow the values of all non-human cultures. There had been no immediate need for him to be removed from the planet – the war had been over for months. What were a few more hours, if even that? No sensible being would accept that Sarek had been out of line in his request to remain until I had been recovered. In the light of these points, it's obvious to anyone that the officers grossly misinterpreted the situation, failed to respect alien values, and overstepped their bounds."

"This is a Starfleet operation," the Captain reiterated. "In a battlefield area, military policy rules." He eyed me under his heavy brows and drawled, bluffing heavily. "I don't recognize that the Federation has any immediate authority over me. Starfleet's judicial system will decide this matter."

"The Federation oversees Starfleet. They'll have your commission for lunch. Try and charge my husband if you like. But if you do, I'll make your name, and Starfleet's, mud through the whole political spectrum of the non-Terran dominated side of the Federation. And a good portion of the Terran side as well. Just see if I won't."

"You don't have the ability to do that," he said.

"Check my record," I insisted. "I'm not bluffing. I have more than a little exposure in political areas. I've handled the press for twenty years. If you pursue this, I have a soapbox that I can and I **will** use."

"This will be a Starfleet trial. The press won't matter."

I laughed at that naïve view. "You don't think so? Cultural stereotypes are in play even in Fleet. Not many Terran men and fewer women would disagree with me if I get up on a witness stand and tell what happened to us. I expect I'll have a good portion of a civil jury weeping in the jury box. Even in a Starfleet trial. And as prejudiced as Starfleet still is with women and aliens, there is a chivalry of sorts. Between the facts, the cultural issues, and the Federation pressure, this case is a loser. There is no percentage for Starfleet in pursuing it. Even if they win it, they'll lose politically. I'm sure your superiors will advise you of that accordingly."

"That Vulcan attacked a Starfleet officer," the Captain bellowed.

"He was acting in self defense."

"A jury will decide that."

"Fine. I've warned you. Are you going to give me a subspace link to contact my next of kin and our superiors in the Federation? Or are you going to charge **me** with something too, and throw **me** in your brig?"

His mouth tightened. But he had no real justification for keeping me incommunicado. He looked down, fiddling with his nails in what seemed like a nervous mannerism. "You can contact my communications officer." He looked at me, gave one last look at his hands, and then turned his back on me.

I sent T'Pau a subspace squirt saying that Sarek and I had survived. But if she wanted information about his condition, she would have to contact Starfleet, as I was being kept from him. Then I sent a brief note to the Federation Undersecretary, asking him to look into our situation. And I sent one to Spock, letting him know we had been recovered and were in satisfactory condition, but telling him nothing of his father's troubles.

Even by subspace squirt it didn't take long for the wheels, once set in motion, to begin to turn. True to my expectations, when confronted with the political implications, Starfleet wanted nothing to do with this potential fiasco. The notion that I might raise the specter that Starfleet had done this to him to retaliate against Sarek for financial and political reasons had them wary. With a new appropriations bill coming up before the Federation Senate, and Decker's officers all back on duty, the idea of having Starfleet charge an alien Federation Ambassador in such circumstances had the Admiralty figurately taking Warp 8 – all a Starfleet ship could do – in the other direction. In fact, their biggest concern now was if Sarek would press charges against them.

Decker – that was the Captain's name -- made some futile arguments with his superiors. But dropped his charges. The next day, Sarek was released from his guard.

When I woke – threatening both Starfleet and the Federation, even obliquely, is hard work and after I sent my subspace calls I barely made it back to bed -- Sarek was sitting by my side, eyes half closed in meditation. It had only been two days, but it seemed like two years since I'd been with him.

He barely had time to come out of trance before I flung my arms around his neck.

"I kept asking for you and asking for you and asking for you, and these philistines--" I lowered my voice, looking around to make sure there was no one in earshot, "wouldn't let me see you. But I tried."

"I know what you tried," he said, with a significant look.

I knew what he meant. Self-consciously, I sat back and released my human death grip. I really do try not to embarrass my husband in public, though the air curtain was shielding us mostly from view. "Sorry." But I meant it as he did, for more than the impulsive embrace. "Are you mad at me?" I asked.

"You are… quite incorrigible."

"I love you too."

He shook his head, ever so slightly. "They tell me you will fully recover," he said.

"Being around all these hearty people makes me aware of just how weak we were getting," I said. "I get a little dizzy at times, but nothing that won't mend. Are you all right?" I asked. "Did they hurt you too badly?"

"I am well enough."

"You look awful," I said. He was still chartreuse from phaser burn. "Have you had something to eat?"

His eyes gleamed just a trifle in amusement. "I have."

"Well, I haven't," I said. "Yesterday, all they gave me was soup. I'm starving. It's hard to believe these people are our allies. I think we'd get better treatment from the enemy. I'm almost ready to go forag--" The air curtain parted and someone stepped through, in the gold of command rather than the blue of science.

"Ambassador, there's a subspace communication for you," The Captain said to Sarek, his eyes not meeting either of ours. "You can take it in the surgeon's office."

Sarek rose a little carefully – he was still obviously pretty weak too, and in the plain black tunic and pants he was wearing he looked ethereally thin – and inclined his head to the officer. "Captain Decker," he said and departed through the air curtain.

Decker looked after him, and turned to me, looking awkward and furious. I held out my hand meant to be a polite gesture of reconciliation, of holding no grudges. "Thank you."

He looked down at my hand -- hard and calloused from gathering wood and with dirt under the fingernails I'd collected when scrounging for cress that the sketchy sanilight bath hadn't addressed. "Dr. Grayson," he said. "Your reputation, and that of your husband, has certainly proved justified." He didn't go further than that. But, as he let go of my hand, he turned his own over to glance pointedly at his own supremely clean fingernails. Perhaps that gesture was simply a personal mannerism, one he couldn't help. But in the circumstances it seemed also like a slight meant to draw attention to my own still dirty hand.

I smiled and gave as good as I got with a comment that could be taken as innocuous if he had no guilty conscience, or in an oblique slight in return if he did. "Naturally, I must thank you for the splendid hospitality you have recently -- and I'm sure will continue -- to extend to us."

He left off twiddling with his fingernails and put his hands behind his back, stiffening. Maybe it was a personal mannerism; but he definitely had a guilty conscience. "I do my duty, Madam." He gave me a computer chip. "My communications officer asked me to give this to you. It came through Fleet channels. You have a son at the Academy?"

I took the wafer eagerly. "Yes. I do."

"A son by a previous marriage?"

I looked up from the wafer, to meet his eyes, understanding what he was asking. "My husband's child. And mine."

He drew back a little. "I see."

It was clear what he saw, and how he felt. But the rush of excitement, seeing Sarek, getting Spock's message, caught up with me, and I had no energy to be appalled at his prejudice. I suddenly felt dizzy. I put my dirty hand to my disreputable forehead as my vision swam. "Forgive me; I'm afraid I'm still a little unwell."

"I'll call the surgeon." He made his escape, and was soon replaced with others. All of them treated us with about the same hands-off mincing attitude you'd give to a dirty bandage. In my experience, these attitudes trickled down from the top. It was pretty obvious that for the most part, the captain's attitude pervaded his ship, that they'd either emulated his views or that he had gathered those of similar views around him. I pitied my son in an environment like this, and I understood some of Sarek's attitude toward Starfleet. Part of the reason we traveled mostly in the _Surak_ was his preference to avoid all this. But Spock had found some good officers to serve with. A Captain Pike had been very kind to him on a training cruise. Still, I hoped Spock never had to encounter Decker. I had a feeling that man would remember us.

But he had come to our rescue, now, however flawed the execution. I got the full story out of Sarek when he returned. He didn't discuss the sordid incident that had resulted in his injury, except to say Starfleet's excessive force was forgivable given that there had been previous incidents of violence among the colonists when rescued. Some of the southern most settlements that survived the bombing had descended into actual cannibalism, as their crops were ruined and the planetary devastation caused unpredictable weather shifts and the death of the pollinating insects as well the animals, fish and bird life. When Fleet officers arrived, some had been attacked, and others stormed. They had reasons for their panic into excessive force, if not justification.

We had been lucky, in more ways than one.

"And the _Surak_?" I asked.

"They had been caught in the full thrust of the battle. Their shields had spared them, but they had converted too much of their power into shielding, trying to recover us. They had failed to run when they should have. Subsequently, they lost pwer to their warp sled and long range communications before pulling out. Then they slogged by subspace out of the war zone. They had trouble getting anyone to take seriously that we could be alive."

Sarek was then chased back to his bed. We had hoped to be returned to Vulcan. But Sarek's condition – a phaser burn on top of the concussion from the blow, on top of his previous injuries and depletions was beyond any skills of the human physician. Given Sarek's VIP status, the ship's surgeon didn't want the responsibility of his recovery. The _Lyon_ then warped to Rigel, much closer than Vulcan, where there was an enclave of Vulcan healers trading knowledge. The day they shuttled us down to Rigel was probably one of the happier of Decker's command.

It turned out Sarek was suffering from pneumonia, concussion, a myriad of nutritional deficiencies, exposure, and starvation. But within a few days, the healers had the first two treated as best they would, and the rest, they assured him, was simply a matter of groceries and time.

As for me, I was actually in better shape on first being rescued, compared to Sarek. But being human with a slower recovery, after he'd been with the healers for a few days of accelerated healing, he had made more significant strides.

Those nasty astringent rose hip berries had saved me from an old disease called scurvy, but I was nutritionally otherwise in bad shape. Like Sarek, the physicians recommended groceries and time. Sarek and I had been warned not to expect me to bounce back so quickly. I was still limping, and was told to expect to do so for several more weeks and not to push my recovery again. As if there had been a choice the first time.

So far I hadn't talked much about our rescue to Sarek. His being thrown in the brig, and then being closeted with the healers, we hadn't had much time to speak. If we had, I didn't quite know what to say.

Even before he had barely been released by the healers, his old life claimed him thoroughly. Tasks and decisions, on Vulcan and otherwise, that had been put off for months began being relayed by subspace.

The Federation representatives at Rigel were very polite. While Sarek was still with the healers, they asked me a lot of questions about what happened through the long diplomatic sessions, matching up my answers with what Sarek had sent in, in his regular reports. They asked what happened in the initial attacks and the war that followed. I talked mostly about the first explosion, the firefights in the sky, and the bombings on the ground, and not so much about our lives. But from the glances the two exchanged with each other, you could see that they were shocked at our survival.

I had, by then, cleaned my fingernails.

This report got churned into the mill with all the other war reports. Before we even left Rigel, we were called to give formal testimony to a subcommittee trying, apparently, to assess official blame for the start of the war. We gave the testimony by subspace priority channels, in full hologram. It cost a mint, I'm sure, but probably not more than a starship taking us back to Terra.

There wasn't much for the investigators to go on, probably why they wanted our testimony. The planetary devastation was so complete, the ships and personnel engaged in the conflict so decimated, that there was no documentable proof on who actually had set off the first bomb.

The _Surak_ joined us while we were at Rigel. Having limped so long at subspace, they had finally refitted at a starbase, the _Surak's_ captain forced to do most of the work himself to keep some of the unique capabilities of their warp sled secret. They'd been kept out of the war zone by Starfleet after they had first left it. Belatedly informed by T'Pau, via my message to her, that we'd been recovered, they'd come to transport us. As we were Starfleet's responsibility till they discharged us at Rigel, per Decker's orders, and as the _Lyon_ didn't recognize they had the authority to transport us, the _Surak_ could only pace alongside Starfleet ship. Having dropped into orbit around Rigel from a demure Warp 7, Sarek's aides and its captain were also deposed to speak before the committee and they were politely asked not to see us until their testimony had been completed. Though neither one of us were locked up to keep us apart. But their testimony shed little more light than ours. My supposition that the war had been started by the sabotage of those representatives who had wanted war in the first place -- those who had been recalled when Sarek brokered the first peace -- matched everyone else's recounting of the events. But the actual battle that had followed had proved to be nearly instantaneous on both sides. The Federation demurred at assessing impolitic blame. They didn't care to make it official when the only witnesses who could testify were foreign and largely alien, not accepted by those who'd engaged in the conflict and with a presumed Federation bias. We heard about the non-verdict months later, and it was much downplayed. The Federation doesn't like to air its failures. Even the proceedings were sealed. The Surak's computer records were – regrettably – officially unable to be confirmed by any secondary source. The end result was that the Federation made a formal protest and censure against the two worlds who engaged in the event. Words on paper, essentially. And that was all.

I try not to let the apparent lack of justice bother me. After all, the people who bombed the peace accord very probably died themselves in the ensuing conflict. I don't know if that's a just result but I suppose it is fitting. They wanted death. They probably got it.

We wanted peace. And we got it too, at last.

The investigators' chief concern regarding us originally was how soon we could make it to Sarek's next assignment. This regrettable occurrence had left him late. But once they saw his skeletal appearance, and mine as well, in the depositions, the general agreement was that we would spend some weeks on Vulcan recuperating before Sarek continued with his Federation duties

We did go back to Vulcan, for a few weeks' leave. Both Sarek's Vulcan healers and my Federation physicians concluded neither one of us were in shape to start another long diplomatic session.

And so we went home. Come full circle, so to speak. If we could. Or could we, really?

Though so skeletal that his old clothes wouldn't fit him for months and only eating about half what he would normally eat at mealtimes – for he'd been warned not to shock his systems until he readjusted to handling normal digestion again – Sarek gave little outward evidence of our ordeal. He was getting stronger every day. Nothing in his manner indicated he'd been through any profound crisis – of circumstance, of conscience.

I couldn't fault him for not speaking of it. I was suddenly shy of raising the subject too. For me, too, the juxtaposition of near despair, of expectation of certain death, of sudden, blinding hope never communicated, of the dumb incomprehension engendered in a rescue that swirled us from one almost incomprehensibly foreseen event back to our formerly normal lives was too abrupt to process.

It seemed as if either this life, or the recent past, was a dream or a nightmare. Good or bad, I wasn't sure if I wanted to wake up and find out which was the reality. On the planet, I'd dreamed of home. Now that we were finally, incredibly, on our way home, I kept expecting to blink or wake up and be back on that planet.

I still needed to raise one unfinished subject. I hadn't yet gotten around to telling Sarek about my raft idea. And I wanted to, if only for the reason that if he ever gets put in a situation like that again, with or without me, he remembers to consider the benefits of a water exit. But we're still exploring the benefits of our changed circumstances. I'm not eager to resurrect a raw and still painful past. Not yet.

Though there is another way. The next time we're on a water world, I'll simply suggest we go boating, canoeing or kayaking. It's not a recreation Sarek would care for. But if I make enough of a point of it, he'll go along with the activity, to please me.

That's all it would really take. I won't have to say a word, or bring up a single bad memory. Sarek may have some cultural limitations to his perspective, but demonstrating by example just once is enough for his mind to process future possibilities. He won't overlook a solution like that again. He may not like it. But he won't overlook it.

After the depositions were over, we were reunited with the crew of the _Surak_. While Vulcans may not show much expression in general, under these circumstances it seemed to me there was a great happiness between Sarek and his aides. So five days after we had been picked up from the planet, two on a Fleet cruiser, and three on Rigel, two where Sarek was closed with the healers and one long day where we gave and listened to testimony, we were free to go home. The _Surak_ had us there within hours. Never have I seen that red sun with more joy.

"What is that star?" I asked Sarek, crowding next to him at the viewscreen as we slowed from high warp into the slower impulse required for system navigation. When Vulcan Space Central cleared us, there was joy in their voices too.

He looked at me, astonished, and then he recognized the teasing glint in my eye, in spite of my reasonable efforts to keep a straight face.

"Eridani," he said.

"All day," I said. "All night. And close enough to touch."

"Indeed," he replied. And careless of the aides and crew, his hand found mine.

After a long and painful exile, we were almost home.

_Two more chapters to go...._


	19. Chapter 19

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter** **19**

We went from one contrast to another. From a world of ice and white, cold blue skies over thick dark forests and frigid temperatures, to one of terra-cotta sands, deep red vistas over distant jagged mountains and the gasping heat of a full Vulcan summer.

It wasn't until I felt Vulcan's pull of heavy gravity, and drew its fiery air into my lungs, that I felt like we had really been rescued. The Starfleet ship had been more alien an environment than the planet, and the inhabitants had not been much friendlier. On Rigel, I was alone, with Sarek closeted with the healers, and me with Federation officials, or both of us giving separate testimony. It had been a confusing whirl of different temperatures, gravities and environments, myriad faces, too many languages, are far too many words. I still felt like I was in a dream. Even traveling in a ship seemed like we had moved to just another cave. But once we were home, I knew it was over.

The _Surak_ dropped her warp sled in space dock for further work, and converting to mere impulse, extended her wings like a Vulcan raptor and glided down to her home berth. Home. We stepped out on the sands of our own hanger court. Everything looked so beautiful, so ordinary, so normal. It was as if we had left yesterday. I could hardly take it in.

Sarek greeted our staff with unusual warmth and they, for the most part, tried to control their inadvertent reactions at his appearance. He'd left behind the furs and cut his hair, but he was still ethereally thin. Over the coming days, he received a steady troop of visitors, all with ostensible Vulcan duties to explain their presence. But they really just wanted to see him. Soon he had a plethora of tasks to occupy him.

That first morning back was eerily similar to the one that had precipitated our departure. Breakfast around the table – eating at a table was still quite a novelty to us, even if it was our own. Toast and jam. I surprised T'Rueth by asking not for jam but for the hot buttered toast I'd been dreaming of for months. She had to pull butter out of stasis, but it was worth it. Sarek had some too. Our eyes met at the first bite, and then we each inhaled our two pieces. Not gobbling it. Savoring it. And asked for two more, though I could only finish half of my third piece. Without a trace of self-consciousness, Sarek plucked the remains off my plate and finished them up himself.

"You're going to have to **not** do this at diplomatic dinners," I said to Sarek.

"If they feed us well enough," Sarek said, with a fine Vulcan disregard for any behavioral standards but his own, "I won't have to." And then he went off to work.

I had no real duties, since we would be leaving too soon for me to schedule any teaching. I was months out of date on the happenings in my field. I was also supposed to keep off my feet for a few weeks. Ostensibly, at least to Sarek's surmise, I was engaged in catching up on research. And since I didn't have his Vulcan tricks to recover, to rest, rest, rest. And I had every intention, at first, of doing so.

I'd go to my office in our suite, sit at my computer. And look over the latest academic squabblings. But I couldn't focus. I'd wander out to the balcony, and sit in the sun, basking in heat much too strong for me, until one of the Vulcan staff spotted me and shooed me in. I invaded the kitchen. Not to eat, being still full from my rich breakfast. Though T'Rueth kept offering me nice cups of tea and various snacks. But my stomach was still too shrunken to eat much, and the myriad of food rather overwhelmed me. I'd decline them but still open cabinets and stasis units and stare as if I were eating with my eyes, cataloging the contents. Just looking at it all satisfied me. I'd suggest she lay in various supplies. She would of course, expecting I wanted her to prepare them. But I just thought we should have them in stock. It wasn't a behavior I'd been known for, before, and the kitchen staff, stared at me oddly. Until T'Rueth shooed me out from being underfoot and in their way, suggesting I take a nice walk.

I'd walk in the shaded gardens and cool-houses, and pick a berry, or an orange. But I wasn't content. All that fruit hanging heavy on vine and branch made me nervous, thinking it ought to be gathered as soon as possible. Sometimes I caught myself gathering without thinking about it, till my hands were full of something I couldn't eat. I was happier when the gardeners did engage in some of their daily harvesting. But they didn't take nearly enough, to my mind. I'd hang around, make suggestions and interfere, and tell them they should fill up another stasis locker until **they** shooed me out with pointed suggestions that I must have other duties.

I wasn't up to swimming, as even our pool felt chilly to me; I had so little fat on my bones. And I didn't' want to faint in the pool and drown. And after my recent experiences in rivers, I felt almost as chary about swimming as Sarek did. But I did take lovely long hot baths, and scrubbed myself until I thought I had nearly got the six months of dirt out of my pores – and off my hands and nails. But you can only take so many hot baths.

I couldn't nap. It made me nervous to try to sleep during the day. I felt there was so much I had to be doing. Six months of spending every waking moment foraging had left me with little ability to turn off that sense that there was only so much time between sunrise and sunset. That there was food to gather and fuel to get.

And I'd remind myself my work, my tasks, were different now. I'd head back to my computer. And yet still I didn't read. I'd pull up an article, or some research I was supposed to peer review. And then my fingers would stray to the net and I'd find myself looking at survival gear. All the myriad of things that would have made our lives so much easier. That could have saved us. I couldn't keep my eyes from looking at them, or my fingers from punching up their images. Close enough to touch, almost.

I kept reminding myself that we **had** been saved. But somehow, that didn't make the nagging "do something, do something, do something" go away.

I'd look at online catalog after catalog, and my fingers would itch to order things we now had no need for. And then I'd turn back to my work and read the same paragraph three times. The third time I'd take it in no better than the first. Then I'd shut off the computer and go outside to sit on the balcony in the heat of a full Vulcan summer afternoon, trying to get warm and not feeling it at all. I was still shaking with a winter chill that was partly physiological -- due to my own skeletal frame. But the Vulcan staff would be horrified to see me out when even Vulcans battened down and shoo me back in.

Finally someone must have had a talk with Sarek. That's the problem with Vulcans. They are too loyal. When I first came, many of the Vulcan staff would have cheerfully seen me fed to the lematya, encroaching outworlder that I had been, stealing the heart of their clan leader. Even though Sarek had chosen me, their loyalty to him just couldn't bear to see him marry someone they considered unsuitable. But after I had seen him through a terrible illness with a particularly unpleasant Vulcan remedy, their animosity had done a complete 180 degree turn. While flattering, the intense loyalty of the Vulcan nature can also be a terrible nuisance. One Vulcan husband can be the worst of mother hens, ever alert for things that might please one, so that you have to be on your guard not to admire too much. But they are equally on the alert for dangers, fussing not just over real ones, but over sunburns and scratches, and aircars that you would have seen perfectly well, just a half second after him. You get the point. With the best of intentions, they can be more than a little smothering. Add a raft of Vulcan retainers, and I might have just as well set myself up in a glass case.

Sarek came home early and hovered in my office door while I was looking at a self-inflatable raft – something hardly useful or necessary in my desert home, but something I kept finding myself drawn to, thinking of that wobbly river line. That we were half a galaxy away from that river, living on a planet without much of any real surface water didn't seem to prevent me from looking at it, and other survival equipment like it, whenever I sat down at the computer.

"Are you working?" Sarek asked, pausing in the doorway. "Am I interrupting?"

I tapped the window guiltily closed. "Not really."

He came in slowly and looked at me for a long moment. I held out a hand and he came closer and took it for a moment before releasing it. Hitched a hip over the corner of my desk -- he wasn't any too strong either. I suspected was having just a bit of trouble adjusting to the heavier gravity, though he would never admit to it. He tilted his head at me. "Are you all right?"

"Are you?"

"I am well enough. That wasn't my question."

I looked down and sighed. "Exactly how all right are you expecting me to be? Under the circumstances?"

"Amanda." He looked at me with some perplexity. "What have you doing?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, evasively.

"I've heard reports--" he paused.

"The walls have ears? Pointed ones I take it. Someone's been telling tales out of school."

"The staff are concerned."

"It's none of their business."

"Perhaps not, though they might disagree. You are my wife; their clan leader. You belong to them, as much as I. But even if you disallow their claim, mine to you is valid. So I am asking. Should **I** have concerns?"

I looked up at him. "Do you think that I can just come home, comb the burdocks out of my hair, scrape the mud out from under my fingernails and go on?"

"Obviously not."

"Obviously?"

"You aren't working. You aren't reading."

I twisted uneasily in my chair, not meeting his eyes. "I can't concentrate. Maybe I'm tired."

"But you aren't resting. You aren't eating. You aren't engaging in your usual recreational activities." One brow rose in puzzlement. "I had thought you would be …happy…to be home. But you do not seem to be, based on your activities. You don't go to the Academy--"

"I have, a few times."

"You don't stay."

"There are too many people there. It's exhausting. They all chatter so much; it just turns into a huge noise in my head and I find myself tuning it all out. It tires me. And I have no classes or seminars now. There's nothing for me to do there that I can't do here."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"Do you really want to see?" I asked, finally goaded enough to share the truth with him. "Then I'll show you." I opened the computer and displayed some of the items I'd been most interested in and had bookmarked. Sarek glanced at them and then looked at me, and his brows rose.

"Crazy, right?" I asked, sitting back, as if I could distance myself from my own behavior.

"**This** is what you have been doing," he mused. "I had been told you could not focus on anything. I had been concerned it was some physical disability. But clearly you are concentrating on this."

"Something inappropriate."

He tilted a head at that. "No. It is…actually…quite logical. And quite well researched."

"Logical?" I couldn't have been more surprised.

"It has been the main focus of your concentration for every waking moment of your day for the last half standard year."

"I hadn't thought of that," I said.

"What else have you looking at?" Sarek asked. He learned forward and widened the window, and his brow furrowed in a way that told me he was actually interested. He pulled up all the things I had bookmarked as if to compare or review them. Brought over another chair. Then he got frustrated at my computer, which doesn't have all the fancy bells and whistles his did, including a much wider screen.

"How can you work on this limited device?" he complained.

"It suits me. It's better than scratching in the dirt."

"Not by much," he said, giving it a disapproving look. "I will not tell you to replace it, since you prefer this antiquated model," it was all of about three years old "but--" He shot the references down to his own computer, in his office on the ground floor. We relocated there. T'Rueth gave us a look as we both trooped down, and apparently decided on the strength of that to relocate our afternoon tea. When she came in a bit later with the tea tray, Sarek had already gone far beyond my tentative choices. Subsequent to research of his own, he was coolly debating with me the merits of survival packet Eight A, with an eight foot portable shelter and a vestibule and a ceramic heating element with a twelve month power supply -- and survival package Twelve A, which had a twelve foot tent, and more equipment, but the same power supply and thus less internal heat. Then we delved into the question of whether it was better just to purchase items separately rather than in a package and get exactly what we might want. T'Rueth raised a brow and backed out of the office, slowly, the better to hear.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wrangling it out, with T'Rueth coming in to bring more tea, and then taking away the ravaged tea tray and then asking diffidently if she should bring dinner into the office too, and Sarek getting her opinion as a cook regarding the emergency food kits. Finally he ended up bringing the captain of the Surak in, and asking his opinion of various distress transmitters.

By the time dinner had been ravaged as well, we had an order worked out with a major supplier who promised to deliver everything before our next assignment. T'Rueth brought in a final pot of tea and dessert. Sarek's usually pristine desk was full of scribbled sheets and notes, and he was flipping through a sheaf of print out, spreading them out across his desk, eyeing competition bows. He'd ordered a portable set but he was clearly seduced by some of the fancier models that would be impractical in a survival situation. I resolved that if he didn't buy one for himself, I'd buy him one as a present to play with at home. And a bunch of paper and automated targets too. Ostensibly for practice. Actually for fun.

"I thought you'd think I was crazy," I said, pouring us tea and adding lemon. I wasn't ready to strip the roses of hips for their astringent quality, but lemon was a nice compromise.

He looked up from the papers he'd spread out over his desk, and took the cup I offered. "After our last experience?"

"I thought you'd consign it to the past yourself, and expect me to move on too."

"We certainly must move on. But it is only logical to learn from the experience. And to be better prepared should it happen again."

"Bite your tongue," I said, only half teasing. He looked up at me, remembering that afternoon on the planet, when he'd come out with that phrase. My eyes met his, and he put his cup down. And for the first time since we'd returned to Vulcan, I actually felt warm. A wordless look passed between us, and I put my cup down too. The sheaf of papers spilled unregarded across the desk. Suddenly Sarek was no longer interested, at least for the moment, in paper targets.

We relocated back to our suite. And it was nice to be home. Beds were a great improvement over grass. And clean crisp linens were very nice too.

We took a nap afterwards, even though in summer there were still many hours until a Vulcan sunset. And that 'do something, do something, do something' voice seemed to be at last, silenced.

When our equipment came, it was more like a Terran Christmas morning, and we the children, than our old Fortress had ever seen, even when Spock had been small. I had them bring the crates and boxes up to our suite, and Sarek and I spent the evening unpacking everything and trying it out, and on. If the Vulcan staff didn't think we were odd before, they must have by then. T'Rueth came up with a tea tray – no way was she letting these interesting occurrences be relayed by T'Jar – to find me dressed most inappropriately for a Vulcan summer, in a micro-down parka and ski hat with ear flaps, jumping up and down in the raft -- I had tried the bed, but the raft was bouncier -- to test the bindings on my hi-tech snow shoes. We had popped up the tent too. We had compromised on a ten footer with a vestibule, and an extra high powered ceramic stove, for Sarek's comfort – and even the main room of our suite seemed crowded. Sarek had put on a water life vest to check it for fit and was turning on the stove to test its production, a five year power supply for it in crates around him, warming his hands before its fiery blast.

"She really must think we're crazy," I said, as she left the tray behind, with one more look askance at our activities and attire.

"Not at all. We must check the equipment before we send it to the _Surak_," Sarek said, sliding a quiver of arrows on his back without bothering to undo the life vest. Fitting an arrow in the bow, he sighted along the balcony doors at a poor innocent gardener who had no idea he could have been pierced like a shish kabob. Sarek had the earflaps tied down on his deerstalker hat, and between that and the bow, he looked like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and a Vulcan Robin Hood. "I wonder what range this bow has, in this gravity?" he mused, as his intended target walked obliviously out of sight. He unshipped the arrow with an almost regretful sigh, fingering the string, scanning the horizon absently for some new potential victim.

"You can always try it on the Forge, before we leave."

"Indeed. I think we should."

"We?" I undid my snowshoes and in view of the stove's excellent production, took off my ski jacket. "Sarek, given we've left winter behind, perhaps that stove is a little **too** productive."

"Indeed. My apologies." He put down the bow and went to turn it off.

I watched him, struck, hearing what I had just said. "I guess we have left winter behind."

"Obviously. But you haven't answered me. About the Forge."

I blinked, putting that aside to focus on him. "You can't **really** want me to go to the Forge with you." I fanned myself with my ski hat.

"I do," Sarek went to turn on the air conditioning, something we rarely used, even in summer. "And, you promised."

"I don't think I did, not in so many words…" I looked at his face, ostensibly controlled, perhaps concealing disappointment even that I couldn't discern, and sighed. "Do you really want me to go?"

He raised a brow. It was enough of an affirmative for me.

We went, a long weekend trip. We took an aircar deep into the Llangon Mountains, where it was cooler. We took all our equipment – for a test drive, Sarek said. He scanned the area for lematya denning near by, for a nearby mountain stream for drinking – which on Vulcan was a cut above the muddy boot print stream but still no more than a scant trickle. Not enough to use our raft, certainly. That would go to the _Surak_ untested. We put up our tent though, and shook out our sleeping rolls, and supplemented some of the natural food with our emergency rations. There was no wood, but as the temperature dropped with sunset as it does even on summer in Vulcan's thin air, we shivered and started a fire of fuel tabs to cook our supper. We did a little stargazing. Sarek pointed out Sol.

"And where is Eridani?" I asked.

"We won't be able to see it," Sarek said, mock gravely. "Until dawn."

"Very funny," I said, and tried to clout him, but his reflexes were too fast. We had a little mock wrestling match instead, that I predictably lost. And to the victor went – well, I may be a little weather-beaten after our adventure, but I don't think I'm **spoiled**. In spite of Captain Decker's opinion.

We finally set our perimeter defenses and settled down. Our sleeping pad beds were quite as comfortable as our beds of springy grass and boughs. After a little story telling from him, and one song from me, we went to sleep.

"It feels right out here," I said to Sarek, as I curled up next to him. "More right than the Fortress, somehow. Almost like home. I'm glad we came."

"I am pleased you feel that way."

And I did, for a few hours. Until I leapt out of a sound sleep at the distinctive roar of a lematya that seemed to be right in my ears. "Sarek! Did you hear that?"

"Indeed." He sat up blinking. "I am not deaf. You don't need to shout."

"Tell that to the lematya! I thought you said it was safe here?"

He shrugged. "Safe is a relative term on Vulcan's Forge. And perhaps I have made an error. I, after all, have just returned here too."

I will confess that I am brave about many things, but these big cats scare me. "Do **something**!" I said as we heard the distinctive lope of the big pads come rapidly closer, stop with a fast sand-splashing slide, and end up terrifyingly close. Soft sniffling wuffs, harsh panting, and low growls revealed it as prowling around the perimeter of our tent, curious but suspicious.

Sarek leaned back against the tent wall. "What do you suggest?"

"You did bring a stun phaser, didn't you?" I asked, scrabbling wildly through our scattered possessions. There was such a thing as too many supplies. "I know you brought the bow, right? Something?" I could hear the click of claws on stone as it bounded up to the rocks above our tent preparatory to its tell-tale spring. "Oh, my god!"

"I thought you wanted to test our equipment?"

I heard the big cat launch itself from off the rock. I yowled and dove for the safety of Sarek's arms at the same time as the cat roared its battle scream, launched itself at the tent, hit the force shield that I had forgotten about, bounced back and gave a screech of its own a split second after mine. I crouched, flattened against Sarek, breathing hard, hearing my heart pounding in my ears along with the pad of lematya paws beating a hasty retreat.

"Well, that test proved satisfactory," Sarek said, with a 'what do you know' air. "The perimeter shields work."

"What would you have done if they didn't?" I exclaimed.

"Filed a claim for the guarantee?" he asked. Then relented. "Amanda. You can't believe that I had not tested the shielding **before** I set it."

"You!" I said, and went after him. We had another wrestling match, not mock on my side, because I was genuinely miffed. True, I had forgotten about the shields, but then, we hadn't had any on the planet either. Finally after one last clout, I gave up.

"I nearly had a heart attack!" I complained to him.

"This is Vulcan," Sarek said. "**My** planet."

"I suppose you mean you don't need all this equipment here." I waved at the well equipped tent.

He glanced at me. "I have no objections to camping this way. Should we ever have need of this equipment in future, we will be versatile in its use."

I sighed, and relaxed. "Given our next assignment is on Babel, a created planetoid with probably one of the most technologically advanced societies in residence, we won't be likely to need it there."

"No," Sarek said wryly. "There I expect the dangers we encounter will be entirely political."

"And we know how those can run," I said, shaking out our sleeping bag.

"Indeed. Sabotage, wars."

"Social knife work. You know, however illogical it may seem, I think I'd **rather** take the Forge. Lematya and all."

"Upon reflection," Sarek said, settling down beside me. "So would I. Still, there is our duty…"

"I know, I know. I've heard it all before," I replied. "I keep suggesting we run away, but you won't, So...Babel, here we come. But Sarek..."

"Yes?"

"Do you think you can take the bow into session?"

He flicked a brow. "I'll meditate upon your suggestion."

"At least a Swiss Army Knife," I said.

"Or two. It is," he said, "a logical thing to do."

"There are times when I love your logic."

"Just my logic?"

"**You** are the incorrigible one," I said.

All the lematyas in the world could have howled after that. We were too occupied to bother with them.

_Review, review, review....just the epilogue to go!_


	20. Chapter 20

**When the Winter Comes**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Epilogue**

In the weeks that followed, in the melting heat of a full Vulcan summer, we gathered the intangibles we needed – our health, our strength, our sense of being back in the real world. And we left winter behind.

We went to Babel. When the _Surak_ slipped into a circular orbit around that Federation caravanserai, our equipment was packed and ready. A portable shelter, all the survival tools we could think of, water purifiers, medical equipment and drugs, clothing for every possible climate, a raft, a cart, a light airplane, powered personal transport harnesses and thrusters, and packets and packets and packets and packets of emergency food. Including T'Rueth's contribution, some freeze-dried plomeek soup. Toast and jam and butter. And if it was absolutely necessary, Sarek's bow and some hand weapons are there too.

The _Surak_ herself had not increased her weaponry. But she did install a transporter, a new technology that Vulcans tacitly disapprove of from a philosophical perspective. But in an emergency…

And before we left Vulcan, Sarek surprised me with an unexpected gift, a box of a half dozen puff balls – day old sex-linked chicks. Though the planet's customs department frowns on introducing alien animals into the Vulcan environment, for Sarek they let them through, with the understanding and promise that they'll be confined to our terra-formed gardens, and not invade the Vulcan ecosystem. He didn't buy them for slaughter. They'll all be hens. We expect them to be very good layers. He's decided unfertilized eggs are okay as a protein source. I suspect he doesn't intend to eat them scrambled or over easy himself. But he won't object to them cooked in dishes.

At first the Vulcan staff eyed the alien creatures askance. But the little chicks had engaging personalities, and soon won them over. T'Rueth is a bit chary at the notion of using eggs in cooking, but Vulcan curiosity is hard to resist, and she began straying through cookbooks for suitable dishes. Soon she was seduced by recipes for soufflés and quiches. T'Jar enjoys throwing them scratch. She looks like a Vulcan goose-girl, a vision from a storybook, when they all come rushing toward her. Though they much prefer rooting through the rose garden. Wol, my husband's rescued Vulcan raptor, would be happy to end the controversy over egg-based dishes, and eat the chicks herself. So much that Sarek had to have a serious talk with her – though don't ask me how he communicates with her. The result is that though Wol is highly offended at seeing these creatures made off-limits, when by her lights they ought to be prey, her regard for Sarek is such that she'll tolerate them. Just.

I'm grateful to Sarek for understanding my feelings enough to lay in supplies and equipment that in all probability, we will never use, except for occasional camping trips on the Forge. It's difficult even now for me to imagine a similar situation occurring. We do have dangerous duties, but lightening doesn't often strike twice. Not that I have any wish to see those purchases justified. While I have enjoyed our shared trips to the Forge, I am in no way desirous to revisit the kind of real survival scenario that we so recently lived through. To return to what we were.

And still are. That's one thing I've learned, coming back. We can comb the burdocks out of our hair, scrape the dirt from under our fingernails, can exchange rags for clean fresh clothes. But we can't leave it behind and go on. We have to carry it forward, with us.

Not just me, but Sarek too. My little chicks, his archery practice, stand in evidence of that.

Though apparently we don't show it.

In fact, waiting for Sarek in that laser line before the reception, while the lobbyists importuned him, a couple of distant acquaintances -- apparently not up on the latest gossip -- complimented me on my lost weight. Standards differ. Impractical as it may seem, being dangerously thin can still be regarded as very fashionable. And though my flowing gown hides my weight loss pretty well, my cheekbones show it. They asked me enviously what spa I'd been to. Since I couldn't quite characterize our last assignment as a spa destination, or wish to go into such details with near strangers, I demurred politely. The questioners' shoulders tensed, taking it as a snub. At the same time, one of the political reporters, eavesdropping on the sidelines, made the acid comment about cushy ambassador's jobs, living high off the public trough.

I looked from one to the other of them, the acquaintance bristling because I wouldn't let on my non-existent spa secret, the reporter with his smug sneering expression and his hard, cynical eyes. And I thought about myself, only a few weeks ago, chill-blained and windburned, standing barefoot in the freezing river with my mouth full of weeds and my stomach flat against my backbone from starvation.

About my shoes, still there even now, covered with drifts of snow, rotting on the riverbank.

That seemed very real. The people before me, more like some fragment of a dream.

I didn't bother to correct them. What could I say? How can you explain such an experience? There's a part of me that will always be there, cold and starving in a planetary winter on a half ruined world. That's more real than any silly political or social backbiting.

You can't see that part of me. I can't see it. But I can feel it. And nothing is more real, regardless of if it comes to me from the past.

But most of me is here, in the present. In a handsome dress, jewels in my hair and on my manicured hands. I've done a pretty good job of combing out the burdocks and scraping out the mud. For me, that was part of coming all the way back.

Though hidden beneath the long skirt of my presentation dress is one of my secrets – I've got very sensible shoes on my feet.

Sarek is still very thin, but stronger than he was before our long sojourn on the planet, now his illnesses have been cured. He's never had so much freedom from the demands of conference table and desk. And in that regard, I think he comes back reluctantly. At least, I've noticed he tries to take some time every day, to keep fit. Unwilling to lose that much of his feral edge, perhaps. Though, after much meditation on the subject, he still doesn't choose to wear a knife. I don't think Sarek really feels that need for himself. Perhaps, in joining with me in gathering all our survival equipment, he was just indulging his human wife. Vulcans are so very different, in spite of our traits in common. But I'll never forget or cease to cherish the memory of him, popping up that portable shelter in our suite, or going through all the equipment with me.

And after all, he has his hands and his wits, and years of experience surviving on the Forge. And for a Vulcan, that is more than enough. I believe that, anyway.

But since I'm not Vulcan, on my belt is a little device that pops into a dozen useful tools. I can't forget how even the simplest things became treasures to us. A pot. A scrap of net. A strip of leather from a dead man's belt.

If it's difficult for me to remember and talk about, for me to expect Sarek to fully understand, how could I discuss any of this to strangers? Even if I tried, what simple few words could convey the experience? You would have had to have been there. And you would never want to be.

I can't really explain my feelings even with Sarek, who no doubt is struggling, albeit with Vulcan control, to regain his own equilibrium.

So I put them down here, in this journal, that I hope no one, ever finds. I have tried to write the experience out. I'm doing it just for me. To set the events and my feelings down. To set them free. And then to close the book on that part of our lives. To finally, outrun winter.

Except for those parts that I choose to take with me.

I smile at Sarek as he finally shakes free of the insistent lobbyist and joins me. He looks handsome in his newly tailored clothes, in spite of his thinness. He answers the reporters' questions placidly. Even when the more knowledgeable ones touch on that last disastrous mission, he never looses his set expression, or lets on that it was more than a regrettable outcome. Even to the one reporter's veiled hostilities and miscast allegations, he says nothing personal. He gives away no hint of the nightmare of those months.

Perhaps Sarek's Vulcan disciplines have succeeded better than mine and he has put the worst of our experience from his mind. What he thought then. Of what it was like for him, waiting for winter. Where it led us. The struggle for survival that even as a Vulcan he had to feel. The loss of hope that I knew he felt at times. And how, even now, our journey to fully return, in spirit as well as in body, is not quite complete. But there's not a trace of winter in his manner, in his eyes. His control is that good.

But perhaps there's none in mine, either. Though the memory is still a raw wound, almost too delicate to disturb, I have done my best to mud wall over the worst of the holes.

He turns, finally, and leads me into the ballroom. The reporters take a few more pictures, and the lights flash against our retinas. I don't even jump, though in my mind, I still hear the roar of explosions, and my hand tightens on Sarek's. He returns the pressure briefly. We share a glance. I remember how he pulled me by this very hand out of the rubble of a terrorist explosion. But here the lights wink and glance harmlessly off the jewels in my hair, and off the gleaming embroidery on his council tunic. Brighter than sun on snow. We do clean up well. As battered as we had been, we look every inch as if we lived a charmed life. Even the cynical reporter is silenced.

In truth, we so often do.

Those kinds of winters come only rarely.

But as I walk into the ballroom, my **other** hand reaches down and fumbles through the drifting veils of my gown for the hard little lump that is my Swiss army knife, and I squeeze it, reassured by its comforting presence.

Just in case.

_Fini, fini, fini at last_

**When the Winter Comes**

**A Holo series Novel**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**October 2008 – January 31 2009**


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